Last week, we kicked off a blog series looking into the idea of “Why Every Dealer Should Track Competitors’ Prices” with the first blog focusing on fluctuating trends in vehicle sales and pricing.

For this edition, we will explore the reality of real-time technology. As the automotive industry continues to make strides toward online real-time data, it becomes imperative that dealers maintain competitive intel on a daily basis.

In the past, automotive dealerships have relied on personal experience and manual tracking to price new and used inventory competitively. Now, new and used car dealerships are turning more towards inventory software to optimize vehicle assortment and pricing relative to local competitors. Unfortunately, these methods are not always enough — the manual approach is no longer practical or feasible in today’s intensely competitive, highly dynamic market and, while inventory software is a good next step, does it include real-time, in-depth, competitive features?

Dealers should be tracking competitors daily to gain real-time competitive information in regards to pricing, inventory, sales, website traffic and even advertising.

When speaking with one of Dominion Dealer Specialties’ dealership customers in Arkansas, they stated that by moving to the online incentive tool within Dominion’s inventory management system, they were able to save hours of manual pricing work per week. This resulted in beating their local competitor by half a day when it came to applying incentive pricing.

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Think about that statement … this dealership was able to pinpoint the exact time advantage he had over his biggest competitor. He’s watching local competitors daily and is able to determine a strategy in order to apply price discounts before they do.

Daily price tracking is vital to a new or used car dealership’s success because competing online is a real-time enterprise. There are several software tools created for the “here and now” that offer automotive dealers immediate alerts and insights to help them contend in this fast-paced environment .

Technology to capture and analyze data is becoming increasingly available and so are the people who know how to put this information to best use, like the dealer mentioned above. As a result, the pace of change is increasing, and dealers have to keep up.

Check back with us next week as we continue the competitive pricing blog series with Part 3. To get started on gaining insight to your competition, click or call 877.421.1040.