Automotive retail is increasingly about experience over cost

A December 2022 Cox Automotive report suggested that US vehicle sales in 2022 marked the country’s worst automotive retail figures in a decade (13.9 million vehicles sold, down 8% on 2021). As car dealerships look for ways to counter such a trend, the traditional means of selling cars—beating competitors on price and providing slick front-of-house representation—are no longer the primary automotive retail driving factors. That’s according to US marketing company Affinitiv, which offers data-driven software solutions to over 5,000 car dealerships and many car manufacturers.