Darren Slind is Vice President, Singapore Operations. He is responsible for leading the expansion of J.D. Power consulting services to a growing client base across Southeast Asia, India, Taiwan and Australia.We talk to him about the evolving consumer and how the digitally empowered generation is not only changing the way people buy cars but changing the dealership experience as well.
Dipayan Dutta (Express Drives): Shall we start with the automotive consumer and how the global automotive consumer is changing? Not just in India!
Darren Slind(J.D Powers) : There are several factors that affect this, let’s start with the product, when we started Quality 1.0, comprised of things that we called IQS (Initial quality standard, a study we start in 1987) gone wrong with the vehicle within thirty days of you driving it out of the showroom. Naturally, a customer whose car broke down in 30 days isn’t going to be too pleased. Then we started to notice less and fewer people that would fit in this 30-day time frame. Which focused on durability over a period of three years and what we found was that even though it was 3 years down the line, the customer still tended to lose faith in the brand. This matters a lot to OEMs considering that this is a time period that would affect the repurchase decision. This we did between 1991-93. Then came quality 3.0 around the end of the century in 1999-200  which dealt with the outward appeal of the vehicle, the design the style and the comfort played a crucial role in developing this standard! What we call automotive performance, design and layout. All on a scale of 1-10 in the weighted average.
At the time when we started Quality 1.0, the IQS was the peoples go to crucible to decide what they wanted to buy. Today initial quality is a given. Cars need to have initial quality.Unlike the cars in the 1980s! Today even the 3-years is a given. Today people are more concerned with the appeal of the vehicle, as much as they are concerned buying and owning experience.
In fact, our research shows that almost 49% people in 2017 in India decide on the vehicle that they want online. It’s all about being digital. We are seeing more people wanting to bridge the gap between the physical showroom and the digital showroom. And these empowered consumers — as I call them–  need to be embraced. That is if a dealer doesn’t want them to feel alienated. Gone are the days when a hapless customer walked into a showroom at the mercy of the dealers, the empowered customer already knows what he wants before they arrived at the dealership.
There is a mindset change required in dealers as well. Digitally empowered Customers are in showrooms because they want to buy. And dealers must deliver that digital experience or risk creating a disconnect between him and customer. So it’s not just the way the consumer behaves that has changed it’s the entire ownership experience.
DD: Do you think digital integration is helping to serve the consumer better? And how do think the dealership experience is going to evolve to integrate this better?
DS: That’s easy, the consumer is much better off now. He has easy access to information pertinent to his interests and he has the wide selection of cars and segments to choose from. He enters a dealership better educated and that is what digital integration means to the consumer. They feel better in control and this makes them more secure, and that usually means better ratings.An empowered consumer is a happy consumer. So everyone wins.
As for the dealers, I think we will see — and we are starting to see the transformation of the dealership from the old sell-close-deliver to facilitators. It helped them transform, and will involve the transformation of the personnel as well, they will need to be more digitally savvy. To create a more connected experience!
DD: There is a lot of talk about declining ownership in cars, do you think that a leasing model could emerge in a country like India?
DS: The answer is yes. There are four major disruptors in this paradigm shift they are Connect-Autonomous-Shared and Electric cars. We already spoke about the connected, and the shared model is something that we believe will be born of connected cars. Ola and Uber are creating a realistic option for people who don’t want to own a car, but still have the ownership experience of the car when they want it. As per their needs.
