How Marketing Technology
is Changing the Automotive
Customer Experience
A New Focus on Customer Experience
During the Dot-com era, research companies began to coin the term
"customer experience" or "CX" as a way of using excellent customer service
as a cornerstone in marketing. It wasn't until the 2000s (when the Internet
became commonplace in most U.S. households) that CX
strategies focused on personalization – and segmentation arose.
This shift ultimately changed the way consumers shop, with
"customer-
obsessed" brands such as Amazon dominating the modern marketplace.
Simply put, today's customers have come to expect a convenient,
personalized shopping experience. To deliver this, dealers need to
understand the behavior of modern car buyers.
What Do We Know About Today's Automotive Buyer?
They're online.
While a vast majority of automotive sales continue to take place in the dealership, much of
the car-buying journey is happening online.
DID YOU KNOW?
92% OF CAR BUYERS RESEARCH ONLINE BEFORE THEY BUY
2
Automotive marketing has changed a great deal since the first-ever U.S. automotive industry
advertisement told the readers of Scientific American in 1898 to "Dispense with a Horse." A couple
decades later, marketing would begin to change as earliest editions of market research began to pave
the way for what would later become known as consumer experience.
By the 1970s, customer satisfaction surveys became the main model for marketers used to measure
and predict consumer preferences, behavior and loyalty. During this era, legendary automotive
marketer J.D. Power III was conducting research for the Ford Motor Company and began rethinking
how we leverage consumer data. By the 80s, Power would fundamentally change automotive
marketing as we know it when he pivoted Toyota's marketing focus from product quality to service and
customer satisfaction.
78%
of auto consumers
say it's important
for the purchase of
a vehicle to be as
easy and convenient
for them as possible
1
