E-planning to buy a Car?

All said and done, the profile of the addictive, compulsive online buyer is becoming vastly different from that of before. He/she is well-entrenched in the world of internet and, now better informed and well aware of the varied options available in the marketplace, and more importantly more used to buying and selling with the comfort of a click. What if such a buyer was to be buying cars?

On one hand, there are these car enthusiasts who log on to sites such as Team-BHP.com for updating their research based information. "In the calendar year 2011, Team-BHP.com was visited by 1.42 crore unique visitors (according to Google Analytics). In the year prior, it was 1.08 crore. We do also have full-feature Team-BHP Apps for the Apple and Android platforms," as Rush Parekh, managing director, Team-BHP says. Team-BHP.com however does not buy and sell cars. It is purely an information resource; in order to keep its content brutally unbiased, it does not accept any advertising from the car industry.

On the other, there are the serious buyers for whom car manufacturers in India such as Maruti, Hyundai, Volkswagen, Ford, etc, have already made their moves online with websites, while other service providers such as Runpapa.com, carwale.com, OLX.in, etc, have put up innovative, interactive social media platforms, and none can deny their increasing impact on car buyers.

"We got 20 mn unique visitors in 2011 as compared to 10.7 mn in 2010, while we sold 13,000 new cars in 2011 as compared to 8,000 in 2010. There were 143,000 used cars listed for sale on CarWale in 2011 as compared to 106,000 used cars listed in 2010. Though new cars and used cars sale on CarWale are in proportion in general, new cars seem to be outperforming the used cars sale. Most of CarWale services, including personalized new car buying expert consultation, are free to the car consumer. For selling a car on CarWale, you need to pay a very small flat fee of Rs 827. To facilitate the online transaction, we work with two leading payment gateways. Though there are some offline payment modes also provided, the users are more comfortable paying online. 90% of the payments made are online on CarWale," reveals Banwari Lal Sharma, overseeing marketing and product efforts, CarWale.com.

And then there is the category of sellers/buyers predominantly in the used car segment that too are using online media to sell-buy cars more avidly. Manu Jolly, a first-time seller on OLX.in says, "None of the dealers nearby my place could offer me a reasonably good resale value for my car. Someone referred to me OLX.in and both the buyer and I closed the deal at respectively satisfying prices. I am a regular email user and had not used the internet for anything else. But after OLX, I have begun to use the internet regularly to buy and sell." OLX agrees. "Users are finding this platform pretty convenient and relevant for buying and selling of used cars. OLX is India's first online platform to address the C2C (Consumer to Consumer or Individual to Individual) market in India. We have realized through our user feedback that we are solving a huge problem for those who want to sell the second-hand cars but have not been able to do so in the past because there was no marketplace where they could sell their second-hand cars. Most of the car owners do not want to spend money on posting ads in either online or print media and the very facet that OLX is completely free to post ads and transact becomes a unique selling point for them. There are many buyers looking for offers of OLX and car owners are able to sell their vehicles faster and at better prices that they are getting offline," says Amarjit Batra, country head, OLX.in, which claims to be India's first online free local classified site.

Buying and selling of cars online is now all the more convenient for the users. "This can be easily done by anybody conversant with basic computers and internet activities like email. Every Indian does not have a computer or knows English. OLX allows users to access the site in ther local language-Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam. A user who is on the go can even access OLX through his mobile. A user can instantly post an Ad through his mobile phone by using the OLX mobile apps that are free to use. After capturing a shot of the product with his mobile phone camera, a user can conveniently enter a detailed description of the product and post the ad in less than 2 minutes. OLX Mobile Apps is available for iPhone, Android, Nokia Ovi, Windows mobile and Blackberry operating systems," adds Amarjit Batra, country head, OLX.in

And this can be done at the comfort of a click, without the need to visit any dealership. "Within 2 to 3 days of posting an ad a user would start getting calls from the prospective buyers. The platform reduces the need for a car dealer and allows individuals to trade directly with the prospective buyers. This makes them zeroed on a good deal which they were not expecting while going through a dealer," agrees Amarjit Batra, country head, OLX.in

Some attractive sites for example, in India, new ones with different USPs, such as RunPaPa.com, are offering the consumers looking to purchase a vehicle this year, to opt out of visiting dealer outlets and logging on instead to their website that uses the Group Buy concept to leverage demand dictated discounts. The auto site, which claims to be the world's first group buy portal for automobiles and ancillary products, has begun this novel way of attracting online car buyers. The Reverse Group Buy feature goes beyond the usual group buy concept of pre-determined discount deals. RunPaPa equips consumers to dictate their own discounts, enabling them to become 'Power Buyers'(as per their release).

The site itself manages the negotiations and when the buyers reach a minimum number in a group, the buying can take place at the discounted prices for that particular group. The site's no-cost service has also helped attract over 100,000 subscribers registering with Runpapa.com and 180,000 fans on Facebook since its inception in May 2011, although the company did not share the minimum number of buyers required for a group buy.

It would indeed be a worthwhile effort if car manufacturers could take note of the potential market available and work on basing their strategies more in sync with such sites for driving robust internet based sales.