Automotive distribution and retailing research, insight, implementation
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What are the most important questions facing auto distribution?

The automotive industry, and the distribution sector specifically, faces many challenges in the near to midterm. These are in addition to the general uncertainty we all face because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the knock-on effect on energy and food prices, possible economic slowdown in China, and a range of other global and local economic factors.

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Steve YoungComment
The importance of community

As some of you may have noticed, this is my first blog for a couple weeks. A couple external conferences followed by our own Autumn Meeting for members of the ICDP research programme created a pretty demanding work schedule which forced blogs down the ‘to do’ list. They did however provide the spark for this week’s blog – the importance of communities to business.

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Steve YoungComment
“Companies are for buying and selling”

Perhaps twenty years ago, I had a colleague who joined the firm I worked for from a small consultancy specialising in advisory work on mergers and acquisitions (M&A). He spent many hours over an extended period of time trying to persuade me to his point of view that companies were for buying and selling – in other words they were a commodity that should be traded just like a used car or a tonne of steel.

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Steve YoungComment
The case for long service

It will not have escaped anyone’s attention that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II passed away at the great age of 96, and that her state funeral was yesterday, marking the end of the period of Official Mourning. Her influence reached far beyond the UK, and even beyond the Commonwealth.

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Steve YoungComment
Is 100% EV a realistic target?

I’m writing this week’s blog whilst in Greece for a classic car rally. It’s the first time that I’ve driven extensively on the Greek mainland and what has occurred to me apart from the beauty of the countryside and the heat in a car without air conditioning is the total absence of electric cars

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Steve YoungComment
In dogged pursuit of customer service excellence

I was surprised in a positive sense by the reaction to my blog last week ‘Why is customer service so tough?’ particularly given that we are still in the holiday period. From my perspective I chose the topic as a reaction to some particularly poor recent experiences, both automotive and other, but it clearly touched a raw nerve for many.

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Steve YoungComment
Why is customer service so tough?

I’ve met a few industry contacts in the last weeks, and apart from the fact that we all have an interest in the future of automotive distribution, the other thing in common is that we all have our premium German cars serviced at the same location. Life should be so easy for them – a strong OEM brand, waiting lists, a residual value premium associated with a dealer service history, some of the highest labour rates in the industry and consistently high dealer profitability.

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Steve Young Comment
The Yanks are coming! (Or is it the Swedes...?)

A characteristic of the UK car retail market is the dominance of the large dealer groups. The Top 10 groups held over a quarter of the total new car market in 2019, and the Top 50 groups held half the market. The evolution of the groups as integrated operations kicked off with the formation of Pendragon, spun out of a diversified conglomerate in 1989 with an initial 19 dealerships.

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Steve Young Comment
What’s the cost of complexity?

I was catching up on my weekly Autocar last week – which I have been reading since I was a young teenager when my father used to bring it back from his office – and picked up on an article related to the latest Vauxhall/Opel Astra. The driving impressions were quite positive, but the bit that I noted related to the product range.

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Steve YoungComment
Why dealerships will need to be more like bodyshops in future

I had a catch-up last week with one of our research programme members, Ian Pugh, the MD of Fix Auto UK – the largest independent bodyshop network in the UK, made up of a mix of independently owned franchise sites and a growing number of wholly owned sites. Ian is a very smart operator, tuned in to the broader developments in the industry, not just collision repair, so every discussion is far ranging and stimulating.

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Steve YoungComment
Fighting for the touchscreen

Although I am sure that more than one family ends up fighting for control of the touchscreen in their car to get their preferred audio source or climate settings, the fight I am referring to is one that is happening in the background, but which will undoubtedly affect us all as car users, and many of us involved in the industry, regardless of who we work for, or what our role is.

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Steve YoungComment
Will customers pay to rent a feature?

Most manufacturers have some ambition in their strategic plan to generate some billions of additional profit in a few years from the sale of digital services. Inspired by companies like Apple, these are seen to be very high margin products delivered over-the-air throughout an extended period of the life of the car.

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Steve YoungComment
Getting used cars to fire on all cylinders

Used cars have featured frequently in various conversations over the last week, but from very different perspectives. ICDP research over the years has consistently demonstrated the importance of getting all aspects of the used car business right in order to get the maximum performance out of this key activity.

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Steve YoungComment
Signs of cracking ...

Early this morning, EU environment ministers reached an agreement on the phasing out of internal combustion engine vehicles from 2035. There had been speculation that the target would be eased, driven by a range of concerns expressed by some governments (notably Italy) and some lobby groups.

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Steve Young
Learning from others

My blog is a day late this week as the ICDP team has been busy finalising the materials for our Summer Members’ Meeting which starts later today. It is the first of our main meetings to be held face-to-face since Autumn 2019 as we had to cancel the March 2020 meeting scheduled in Berlin as Covid struck. It’s therefore quite a big deal, as all the meetings until last month had to be held virtually.

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Steve Young
Schadenfreude

Schadenfreude is the German word for taking pleasure from another person’s misfortune. In a British culture it is not considered polite to indulge in such behaviour, but given the news of the last couple weeks, it would be strange if my blog covered any topic other than the pain that is now being admitted by Cazoo – the online used car retailer that promised in its IPO document just 15 months ago that it would “transform the car buying experience across the UK and Europe”.

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Steve Young
Uncharted waters ahead

Last week Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford and personally responsible for their new Model E division focused solely on electric cars and trucks, caused a stir amongst US dealers with comments he made in an interview with Bernstein.

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Steve Young
Shooting for the stars

I was on holiday last week, and caught up on some reading as well as catching some rays and having a go at horse-riding up in the mountains of Crete, encouraged by my ex-showjumper fiancée. (Really good fun, even if I still feel safer closer to the ground, albeit at higher speed.) One book that I read was a biography of Elon Musk who seems to have been in the headlines even more than usual recently with a focus on his life story rather than any specific event, deal or regulatory transgression.

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Steve Young