Time will tell, but you’ve got to think in North America’s larger cities – where in many cases commercial property costs are steep – that some auto dealers will start following the lead of European automakers who are shifting from large footprint dealerships to small retail settings that lean heavily on digital.
I wrote recently about a new VW concept store in Birmingham, England in a busy mall, and have since stumbled on a new concept store in Germany involving Opel, and an existing, expanding set-up run by Hyundai in the UK that is heavily digital.
The Hyundai set-up – called Rockar – has a similar footprint to, let’s say, a shoe store in a mall. The auto boutique uses in-store, online and mobile platforms, allowing guests to research, book a test drive, obtain a price for their old car, choose a payment option, purchase and organize a service of their car all digitally. The store itself has 26 digital screens that wrap around the space and pull mall-goers in.
The Rockar concept may expand to supermarkets, like Tesco, in the UK – as operators try to be where the people are, while cutting overhead costs.
Rockar seems to be the inspiration for the Opel store in Stuttgart, which appears to have screens. The stories in English don’t say if the big visuals are digital, but the gridlines suggest narrow-bezel video walls.
It makes sense, and maybe it is already happening in Canada and the U.S. The only hint of shopping mall stores like this, that I’ve seen, is Tesla. But buying a Tesla is automatically different from buying a Hyundai or Toyota.
Big opportunity for digital signage here – as things like video walls and other screens that are now seen, often, as part of the decor and showroom sizzle would, in these small format stores, be fundamental parts of the design and service delivery.