Executive Briefings
ICDP’s Executive Briefings - high-level summaries of our insights on the full range of programme topics - are available for all to read and download. If you make use of them in your own material, please remember to attribute ICDP as the source.
Executive Briefings from 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018 and 2017 are also available to download.
What innovations and service offerings influence repairer choice?
EB 06/24 Christophe Guillaneuf
Whatever your role in the sector, aftersales is generally seen as a relatively stable source of revenue and profit. This is due to the slow evolution of the parc and the need to maintain vehicles and replace wear parts regardless of economic climate and other external factors. This can lead to a degree of complacency about how the aftersales business itself is managed - there is still scope for innovation, and thus reduce costs or win market share at the individual player level. ICDP has recently looked at this topic from the consumer perspective to see what innovations in aftersales will influence their choice of repairer.
Will increasing regulatory restrictions around the sale of finance products challenge the sector’s business models, including agency?
EB 05/24 Andrew Tongue
Finance in all its forms has been a key part of the car acquisition process for the last century. Pioneered on new cars by GM in the USA in the early 1920s, it has since evolved from traditional ‘loans’ and ‘hire purchase’ into a myriad of different rental, leasing, and subscription products, and now extends beyond the car itself into a range of surrounding and supporting services from service plans and extended warranties to EV charging plans, subscriptions to digital services and functions-on-demand in the car, and insurances of various types.
Connected Fleets
EB 04/24 Ben Waller
This executive briefing will be published soon
Doing the heavy lifting – an analysis of the Top 300 European Dealer Groups
EB 03/24 Steve Young
At all levels, dealer groups continue to grow in scale, either organically as they take on new brands and expand into new geographies, or through merger and acquisition (M&A) as family investors look to exit at the same time as other investors continue to seek new growth opportunities.
No customers demand agency
EB 02/24 Steve Young
For the last year or so, the topic of agency has been continuously in the trade media, featured in almost every automotive conference and been a significant part of most discussions that ICDP has with our members, both manufacturers and dealers. There has been a concern on the part of manufacturers that they may be missing out (regardless of whether they are actively implementing agency, or denying that it forms part of their future strategy). Dealers are concerned that at some point it will have a detrimental effect on their business, in the worst case scenario, one that threatens their very existence.
What can be done with legacy investments?
EB 01/24 Steve Young
The growth in scale and quality of finish of dealer property over the last couple decades is obvious to everyone, but we now face a crunch point as there is now a new focus from the manufacturers on reducing cost of distribution. Much of this cost is actually in the form of different types of pricing support, but the cost of building and operating dealerships has to be covered from within the dealer margin, and that is being squeezed by manufacturers whether they retain franchise contracts or move to agency agreements.