The Virtual Used Car Trick

We recently received the following email from a company selling a software product for used car dealers, even though we aren't such a dealer. It points out a problem that used car dealers have when they sell their cars on the Internet — they lose the opportunity to sell customers a car they don’t want. If potential customers find out that the dealer doesn't have what they're looking for, they leave and seach elsewhere — never to visit the dealer's lot.

Email content
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"There are generally two schools of thought when it comes to posting your new car inventory on your website. One school says it is a good thing to do because you provide your potential customers with a listing of your available inventory while the other claims that posting your online inventory is the worst thing you could do because it limits the vehicle choices to what you have on hand. If the customer doesn’t see what they’re looking for, they will leave your site and go somewhere else to find it.

This is the main reason cited by most dealers that do not post their inventory on their site. Many dealers also express concern that they can’t compete with the “big boys” out there because their inventory pales in comparison to the size of the inventory shown on some of the mega-dealer sites. According to a December 2004 article in NADA News, statistics indicate that up to 92% of the visitors to your website are interested in looking at inventory.

So what are the alternatives? One option available is a product that launched this month called Virtual Inventory. This product looks and feels like inventory but includes every Make, Model, Trim and Color the manufacturer builds. 'Finally, a product that will give us an alternative to posting our inventory', states [a used car dealer in California].

'This product allows the smaller dealer to compete with the larger stores in cyber space' says [CEO of company offering the product]."
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So, with this product, you can go to a used car dealer’s website where it appears that he has thousands of “virtual” cars in inventory. This may motivate you to visit the dealer, who actually has only two cars on the lot, one of which he tries to sell you even though it’s not even close to what you are looking for. Ain’t technology wonderful.