Commentary
Fiat Chrysler Teams With Amazon To Sell Cars Online
- by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, November 22, 2016
Cars are getting connected, marketers are inventing new ways to get advertising and messaging to drivers and passengers in those cars and now online car sales are getting involved.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has teamed with Amazon to sell cars online with additional discounts.
"The time has arrived to give consumers a new, more efficient and transparent way to choose a new vehicle," Gianluca Italia, responsible for Fiat Chrysler in Italy, said during an online press conference reported by Reuters.
The online car sales will start in the Italian market with consumers ordering the car online and then being contacted by Amazon to decide which dealer they want to go to for the car pickup.
This takes the concept of a connected car to a whole new level, starting the connecting in the actual purchase phase.
This is in the context of the continuing evolution of the entire connected car environment.
For example, General Motors invested $500 million in ridesharing service Lyft, Vugo is marketing back-seat video screens for to deliver messaging to ridesharing passengers and Intel last week said it was investing $250 million to advance connected cars.
In that context, ordering a car through Amazon and picking it up at a dealer later fits right in with the internetworking of cars.
Chuck Martin is Editor of the AI & IoT Daily at MediaPost and writes the daily Connected Thinking column. He is a NY Times Business bestselling author and his latest book is “Digital Transformation 3.0” (The New Business-to-Consumer Connections of The Internet of Things.) He is CEO of Net Future Institute and a frequent keynote speaker internationally. Follow him on Twitter @chuckmartin and contact him at Chuck@MediaPost.com.
Vehicle finance is where much of the money is made by dealers as most consumers don't have the money up front to pay for the capital cost of a vehicle. It'll be interesting seeing how shopping through Amazon addresses this issue.
THE LAST CAR I WOULD EVER BUY ON LINE IS A FIAT. (or off line)
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Consumer Reports most unreliable car.
All of the models on Consumer Reports' list scored less than 62 points on a scale of 1 to 100. The lowest score, 31, went to the Fiat 500L compact car. Consumer Reports said the 500L has several "significant flaws," including a "poor" rating in the small-overlap frontal crash test conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
"Don't just take our word for it," Consumer Reports wrote about the vehicle. "Even owner satisfaction is below average — meaning a strong percentage of owners wish they hadn't bought this hatchback."
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2015/11/06/consumer-reports-reliablity-20--worst/75275986/
And the the worst service record in Europe
Maybe they'll be the first self driving car, cause no one will buy them!!
It becomes a finance company just like so many others we are supposed to think they are selling retail items when they are selling payments.
Also, physics - http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/vehicle/v/fiat/500-2-door-hatchback
The buyer still ultimately deals wiht an auto dealership, Norman.
That may be one aspect, Mark, but at least the model and process can be analyzed to see if it works.
Thanks for sharing that, Brian.