When it comes to the incentive deals offered by auto companies to potential car buyers, little has changed, despite advances in technology. Customers may be starting their auto purchases online, but automakers are still trying to reel them in with deals that are marketed more like the coupons found in a newspaper or Sunday flyer, says entrepreneur Sean Murphy.
The incentives, say $1,000 off the purchase of a certain car type in the next month, go out en masse to consumers, and car makers have no way of determining whether a slightly larger incentive or a different deal entirely would have more power in attracting a certain customer, says Murphy. It’s a problem his Ann Arbor-based startup, Buycentives, is trying to fix with its software.
“We’ll be able to take that consumer information, using software we developed, and we’ll be able to determine what the appropriate incentive is for the consumer to generate a sale or buy a car,” says co-founder Murphy, a veteran of the product strategy and marketing side of the auto industry.
Many automobile makers generate sales leads when interested shoppers start their car search online, through sites like Kelley Blue Book, Edmonds.com, and Yahoo! Autos. And rather than putting out the same offer to all consumers, Buycentives’ software would enable companies to automate incentive offers to these shoppers, tailoring the deals based on things like the person’s budget, past vehicle ownership, geographic location, and so forth. Buycentives would offer this tailored discount from the automaker right at the site of purchase, if customers are buying online, or would immediately e-mail the customer a certificate to bring into a dealership.
“We’re developing a probability model that allows us to segment customers based on information we know, and go into developing a very specific incentive,” he says.
More customized sales incentives could enable automakers to get the most out of their incentive budgets, Murphy says. For example, certain customers might not be inclined to buy a car with a $1,000-off incentive, but a slightly larger $1,500 discount could sway them. A company might break its budget offering that big of a discount to everyone—wasting the extra money on those who are already willing to buy for $1,000 off—so traditionally companies err on the side of keeping offers lower and in doing so lose some customers, he says. But the Buycentives tool could identify which customers would likely be convinced by the slightly bigger incentive, and offer
