Maruti Suzuki India, India’s largest carmaker has claimed on Monday that it has sold more than 2 lakh cars through its online channel. Maruti Suzuki introduced its online sales channel two years ago and now it covers nearly 1,000 dealerships across the country.
Maruti Suzuki India commenced taking online bookings in 2017. With the customer behaviour further shifting to online methods of car purchase, the company’s dealership’s websites are witnessing a much larger traffic flow in recent times. Specially, the online traffic has grown in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic.
Commenting on the carmaker’s online car sales, Shashank Srivastava, Executive Director (Marketing & Sales), Maruti Suzuki India, said that since the introduction of the digital sales channel, the automaker has witnessed three times increase in digital enquiries and recorded sales of over 2 lakh units since April 2019. This digital channel is claimed to have helped to generate over 21 lakh customer enquiries for Maruti Suzuki.
Citing ‘Google Auto Gear Shift India 2020 Report’, Srivastava said that nearly 95% of new car sales in India are digitally influenced as per the customers first research online and then go for buying at the physical dealerships.
The online experience provides the complete spectrum of information to the customers, while at the last mile the customers seek assurance of the deal from their trusted dealer advisors. “Interestingly, customers who enquire through our digital channel end up purchasing a car within 10 days. This reaffirms that with a robust online to offline platform executed by a digitally enabled salesforce, converting digital enquiries into sales becomes easier,” Srivastava added.
Srivastava also said that Maruti Suzuki witnessed a two-fold increase in ‘Near Me’ customer searches for Maruti Suzuki dealers. The automaker has been investing to create a hyper-local platform in a bid to help the customers discover the Maruti Suzuki dealerships faster and connect with them.
As Srivastava said, “In the last two years, we have integrated over 1,000 dealerships across 3,000 online touchpoints in this digital transformation journey. The positive results of the initiatives are evident as digital enquiries for Maruti Suzuki have seen a five-fold increase to around 20% of total sales.” He also added that in the prevailing Covid-19 pandemic scenario, the digital enquiry contribution has further increased exceeding 33% during the last five months.
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