The analysis of worldwide retail trends showed that the landscape of touchpoints is changing and a new customer journeys are emerging. Customer experience is heavily shifting towards online interaction. Thus, the benchmarks selected for the research rely on facilitating the dealerships present, as well as improving offline customer experience to improve customer retention. It is important to create an omni-channel experience, with seamless transition from online touchpoints to offline. Specific selected benchmarks focus on this point.

Research of the theoretical concepts outlined a buying decision process model, which was further used as a structure basis for analysis. The selected benchmarks, the interviews and the survey were analyzed using this structure. Though price market segments were defined, they turned out irrelevant at the recommendation development stage, as research has shown that the customer experience does not directly depend on the price segment. The conducted research allowed to select specific benchmarks.

The selected benchmarks were segmented by generation in order to see how they apply to the current customer experience on the Perm automotive market. After distributing solutions on segments and buying decision stages, implementation costs were assessed.

The overall conclusion is that there is a number of ways for the dealer to improve customer experience in order to gain competitive edge in any price segment by implementing existing international customer experience management solutions. To do this, the dealership must know his customers. By defining what customer segment is bringing the most sales, the dealer can choose to attract more customers from this segment, or to focus on underperforming segment.

In the future, this research can focus on developing a marketing plan to implement these solutions. After implementing the selected best practices and tracking performance, it will be possible to make conclusions, what specific benefits can copying existing solutions bring.

References

1. Brigman. (2013). CEM Dictionary.

2. Gentile, Spiller, & Noci. (2007). How to Sustain the Customer Experience. European Management Journal, 397.

3. Grewal, D. (2011). Customer Experience Management in Retaling. Journal of Retailing.

4. Kotler. (2002). Marketing Management.

5. Verhoef, Lemon, Parasuraman, Roggeveen, Tsiros, & Schlesinger. (2009). Customer Experience Creation. Journal of Retailing.

Abstract

Customer experience is changing in automotive retail around the world, thus dealerships have to improve it in order to stay competitive. An efficient strategy is to copy best practices, proved to be efficient. This research studies the benefits and difficulties of customer experience benchmark solutions application to the Perm automotive retail market. The methods to solve the research problem are existing case analysis, benchmarks selection through a customer survey and semi-structured interviews with local automotive marketing experts and consumers. The conclusions based on the research allowed to develop recommendations on which solutions are suitable to apply for different customer segments. The overall conclusion is that there is a number of ways for the dealer to improve customer experience in order to gain competitive edge in different segments by implementing existing international customer experience management solutions.

По всему миру в автомобильной рознице меняется потребительский опыт. Таким образом, автодилеры вынуждены улучшать его, чтобы оставаться конкурентоспособными. Для того, чтобы добиться этого, копирование лучших существующих решений - эффективная стратегия. В этой работе исследуются преимущества и сложности в применении международных лучших решений на пермском рынке автомобильной розницы. Для решения исследовательской проблемы используются следующие методы: анализ существующих кейсов, отбор лучших решений с помощью полуструктурированного интервью маркетинговых экспертов и опроса потребителей. Выводы на основе исследования позволили разработать рекомендации, какие решения больше подходят для применения в разных сегментах. Общий вывод заключается в том, что есть различные способы улучшить текущий потребительский опыт, чтобы повысить конкурентоспособность в различных сегментах, используя существующие международные решения в управлении потребительским опытом.

Applications

Application 1

Consumer interview questions

· Tell about your experience of buying a car. What triggered the need to buy a car?

· How did you look for information? Where did you start?

· Did your initial consideration set of dealerships change?

· How many dealerships did you contact? If more than one, what made you change your choice of dealership? How many times approximately did you contact the dealership? How many times did you visit the dealership?

· How many time have you spent at the dealership?

· Are there any prominent moments of your customer experience that you can describe?

· Are you satisfied with the provided experience?

Application 2

Expert interview questions.

Can you tell me your opinion on the advantages and disadvantages of the solutions that I will be describing? Also I am interested in possible benefits and cost. Here are the categories and specific solutions:

Mobile application: customer experience elements featured in the mobile application. The application is a solution itself, and is asked about in surveys and interviews as a separate question, summarizing the features below. These features mostly coincide with the ones presented in the website category. Generally, they differ in technical execution and user experience details.

· 3D configuration: the ability to select options and design features of car. The price of the customer's preferred specific set of parameters and the cost of every particular options is shown. Percentage match with in-stock cars on the preferred configuration is also displayed.

· Virtual reality: a virtual dealership experience allowing to examine cars in detail, which implies to use accessories such Google Cardboard.

· Notifications: the customer receives various messages from the dealer depending on the purchase stage. These can be about special offers and other before the purchase, and predictive service reminders after the purchase stage.

· Information: data on the dealerships inventory, what cars are in stock, car delivery status, etc.

· Online consultant: online chat, which allows the customer to ask any question and get an immediate response.

· Online appointment: the ability to choose a time to meet with the manager.

· Tracking activity: the dealership tracks the activity of a specific customer in order to know his needs in advance.

Website solutions: solutions features on a website. As already mentioned, they are generally similar to the mobile application benchmarks, but have considerable differences in implementation and user experience.

· Online consultant: online chat, which allows the customer to ask any question and get an immediate response.

· Online appointment: the ability to choose a time to meet with the manager.

· Tracking activity: the dealership tracks the activity of a specific customer in order to know his needs in advance.

· 3D configuration: the ability to select options and design features of car. The price of the customer's preferred specific set of parameters and the cost of every particular options is shown. Percentage match with in-stock cars on the preferred configuration is also displayed.

· Integrating traffic from 3rd party websites: attracting more users to the dealerships website via automotive online automotive media and markets such as smotra.ru, drom.ru, etc.

· Info: data on the dealerships inventory, what cars are in stock, car delivery status, etc.

· Virtual reality: a 3D on-screen virtual dealership experience allowing to examine cars in detail.

· Notifications: implementing browser notification technology, so the customer receives various messages from the dealer depending on the purchase stage. These can be about special offers and other before the purchase, and predictive service reminders after the purchase stage.

Sales formats: these solutions focus on the emerging sales formats. Currently, a versatile enough sales format does not exist, and the ones below have both pros and cons.

· Online stores: the customer can make a complete purchase online, typically works with preconfigured cars.

· Test drive centers: large sales formats with an extensive amount of in-stock cars, offering to test drive them on any requested type of terrain.

· Superstores: large stores located in the outskirts with extensive amount of in-stock vehicles, which allows to achieve zero delivery time.

· City stores: offices located in the city center with a little amount of in-stock vehicles. Implies heavy usage of digital technology and is mostly focused on improving the brand image.

· Mobile/pop-up stores: temporary stores usually located in city centers, typically set up for events like demonstrating a new car model.

· Home visits: the manager visits customer at his home, after arranging a meeting via phone/email or through communication channels proposed in this study (online appointment).

In-store solutions: this category of solutions describes customer experience features that can be presented inside sales formats described above.

· Multimedia screens: the can be implemented in various ways. Firstly, this can be large screens placed on the walls of the room with interactive multimedia, showing any detail of a car. Secondly, it can be standard screens placed in the room with such media. Also, tables with multitouch screens are used to show the described content.

· 3D configuration: the ability to select options and design features of car. The price of the customer's preferred specific set of parameters and the cost of every particular options is shown. Percentage match with in-stock cars on the preferred configuration is also displayed. Can be done through the website and multimedia screens.

· Assistance of interactive information applications on iPads: the manager can show his expertise in cars and his awareness of a specific customer's needs by answering any of his question with the help of information displayed on the tablet.

· Consultation lounge in a private setting: a comfortable room for the customer and manager to discuss various matters.

· Augmented reality: additional information is displayed about the car in whole or any specific part of it, when it detects that the customer is looking at it. This feature requires additional equipment like Google Glass.

· Virtual reality: the customer can see a car, which is currently not in stock; do virtual test drives sitting inside a car.

Other solutions: the section of the selected benchmarks shows other possible solutions like those, focused on promotion or aftersales interaction.

· Social media: the dealership must be quick to react on the customers messages online to maintain a positive reputation. Also customer data should be integrated with the existing customer relationship management system.

· Customer club: customer ownership club, which creates a prestigious brand image of the dealership.

· Test drive delivery: cars are delivered for a test drive to any locations the customer wants.

· Set and closely track performance measures: metrics on conversion rates through the sales funnel must be tracked in order to understand whether the dealer is efficient on every buying decision stage. This is also necessary to measure whether new implemented solutions improve performance.

Application 3

Consumer survey.

· Mobile application

· 3D configuration: the ability to select options and design features of car. The price of the customer's preferred specific set of parameters and the cost of every particular options is shown. Percentage match with in-stock cars on the preferred configuration is also displayed.

· Virtual reality: a virtual dealership experience allowing to examine cars in detail, which implies to use accessories such Google Cardboard.

· Notifications: the customer receives various messages from the dealer depending on the purchase stage. These can be about special offers and other before the purchase, and predictive service reminders after the purchase stage.

· Information: data on the dealerships inventory, what cars are in stock, car delivery status, etc.

· Online consultant: online chat, which allows the customer to ask any question and get an immediate response.

· Online appointment: the ability to choose a time to meet with the manager.

· Tracking activity: the dealership tracks the activity of a specific customer in order to know his needs in advance.

· Online consultant: online chat, which allows the customer to ask any question and get an immediate response.

· Online appointment: the ability to choose a time to meet with the manager.

· Tracking activity: the dealership tracks the activity of a specific customer in order to know his needs in advance.

· 3D configuration: the ability to select options and design features of car. The price of the customer's preferred specific set of parameters and the cost of every particular options is shown. Percentage match with in-stock cars on the preferred configuration is also displayed.

· Integrating traffic from 3rd party websites: attracting more users to the dealerships website via automotive online automotive media and markets such as smotra.ru, drom.ru, etc.

· Info: data on the dealerships inventory, what cars are in stock, car delivery status, etc.

· Virtual reality: a 3D on-screen virtual dealership experience allowing to examine cars in detail.

· Notifications: implementing browser notification technology, so the customer receives various messages from the dealer depending on the purchase stage. These can be about special offers and other before the purchase, and predictive service reminders after the purchase stage.

· Online stores: the customer can make a complete purchase online, typically works with preconfigured cars.

· Test drive centers: large sales formats with an extensive amount of in-stock cars, offering to test drive them on any requested type of terrain.

· Superstores: large stores located in the outskirts with extensive amount of in-stock vehicles, which allows to achieve zero delivery time.

· City stores: offices located in the city center with a little amount of in-stock vehicles. Implies heavy usage of digital technology and is mostly focused on improving the brand image.

· Mobile/pop-up stores: temporary stores usually located in city centers, typically set up for events like demonstrating a new car model.

· Home visits: the manager visits customer at his home, after arranging a meeting via phone/email or through communication channels proposed in this study (online appointment).

· Multimedia screens: the can be implemented in various ways. Firstly, this can be large screens placed on the walls of the room with interactive multimedia, showing any detail of a car. Secondly, it can be standard screens placed in the room with such media. Also, tables with multitouch screens are used to show the described content.

· 3D configuration: the ability to select options and design features of car. The price of the customer's preferred specific set of parameters and the cost of every particular options is shown. Percentage match with in-stock cars on the preferred configuration is also displayed. Can be done through the website and multimedia screens.

· Assistance of interactive information applications on iPads: the manager can show his expertise in cars and his awareness of a specific customer's needs by answering any of his question with the help of information displayed on the tablet.

· Consultation lounge in a private setting: a comfortable room for the customer and manager to discuss various matters.

· Augmented reality: additional information is displayed about the car in whole or any specific part of it, when it detects that the customer is looking at it. This feature requires additional equipment like Google Glass.

· Virtual reality: the customer can see a car, which is currently not in stock; do virtual test drives sitting inside a car.

· Social media: the dealership must be quick to react on the customers messages online to maintain a positive reputation. Also customer data should be integrated with the existing customer relationship management system.

· Customer club: customer ownership club, which creates a prestigious brand image of the dealership.

· Test drive delivery: cars are delivered for a test drive to any locations the customer wants.

· Set and closely track performance measures: metrics on conversion rates through the sales funnel must be tracked in order to understand whether the dealer is efficient on every buying decision stage. This is also necessary to measure whether new implemented solutions improve performance.

· Age.

· Wealth.

· Car buying experience.

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