Suddenly your customers begin to behave differently and fail to respond to your strategies, marketing concepts and sales arguments the way they used to.
One striking macro-example of such disruptive change is “digitalization”. Very specific, yet strangely universal. Very sudden, yet here to stay.
So, how do you know when your old ways are about to become obsolete, challenged by new business realities and new trains of thought? And what can you do about it?
Changing customer behavior
Often the earliest, most fundamental sign is changing customer behavior in general, not just in your own business sector or profession.
- When most people started to spend less time in the shopping center and more time online, it was bound to affect their car buying habits, too.
- When video gradually became the preferred content in social media, it soon became the preferred choice among online shoppers as well.
- When automation was changing every industry to the core, including automotive distribution and administration, why would marketing and sales stay the same?
Car makers and dealers strike back
Disruptive technologies almost always lead on to disruptive business models. For obvious reasons, these new models typically emerge and evolve outside established organizations and corporate cultures with a lot to lose. Now the car manufacturers and their traditional dealerships seem determined to strike back.
A recent McKinsey report (20320), suggest five future forms of joint OEM/dealer strategies:
- OEMs building on the work of entrepreneurial dealers
- Dealers serving as execution agents while OEMs remain in control of new-car sales
- OEMs fostering competition while dealers are exchangeable execution providers
- OEMs owning the retail approach
- OEMs handing over responsibilities to importers.
Or, more likely, combinations thereof.
All companies and all markets are different, but the road ahead invariably begins with continued evaluation of consumer behavior, own resources, and competition. And a keen ear to the ground to keep up with the general societal development, and the collective minds of a new generation car buyers in particular.
When your old world is gone, you start building a new one.