Dealership Mobility Research
Dealerware provides fleet management solutions for automotive dealerships. The “Dealership Mobility” project explored how to help dealerships leverage idle vehicle inventory to meet a consumer demand for non-ownership vehicle models. The business hypothesis assumed that dealerships could offer new mobility services to increase the revenue per idle vehicle.
Roles
As a senior member of the product design team, I led and collaborated with two designers to explore the feasibility of a vehicle subscription model. This involved bridging the gap between the high-level business hypothesis, the practical realities of dealer operations, and consumer needs.
Timeline
The research portion of this project spanned 2-3 months.
See Mobility Product for the solution roadmap and prototype.
-
We wanted to better understand how both consumers and dealership staff think about vehicle usage and mobility services in order to create features that maximize vehicle revenue throughout its lifecycle.
Goals:
Discover the consumer's current decision-making processes regarding car ownership vs. car subscriptions.
Learn about the pain points of dealership staff regarding inventory utilization and sales incentives.
Evaluate the operational challenges of managing a shared fleet across different services (Service Loaner vs. Rental vs. Subscription).
-
Research was designed to probe into vehicle costs, insurance coverage, fleet utilization, and dealership operations.
For Consumers: “How do you view the cost of your car when it is sitting unused?” “What makes a rental experience easier or harder than using an on-demand service like Lyft?”
For Dealers: “How do you feel about managing mobility services interfering with your primary sales incentives?”
-
We employed a mixed-method qualitative approach to gain deep context:
Research Repository Review: We reviewed archived research conducted months before the project, including extensive job-shadowing sessions.
1:1 Interviews: Conducted with consumers and dealership staff to uncover mental models and sentiments.
Contextual inquiry: Observed “boots on the ground” dealership operations to understand the friction in existing workflows.
Participatory Design: Included “Customer Journey Sentiment” mapping, “Customer Service Priorities” ranking, and “Operations Ideation” to co-create solutions with dealership stakeholders.
-
The study utilized a diverse sample of 30 participants to capture the full dealership ecosystem:
Consumers (7): Included AudiSelect prospects, subscribers, and Silvercar rental customers.
Dealership Staff (8): Included General Managers, Sales Managers, and Service Managers.
AudiSelect Operations (5): Included Operations Managers, Concierges, and Customer Support.
Dealership Leadership (10): A cohort of dealership leaders gathered to ideate new dealership operations and models for mobility services.
Analysis & Synthesis Process
The raw data was synthesized into a hierarchical framework to identify actionable patterns:
542 observations were collected from the field.
Observations were grouped into 67 Themes.
Themes were summated into core insights.
Outputs & Deliverables
Our primary output was a research report detailing the following:
8 Core Insights: 4 insights for dealerships and 4 insights for consumers.
8 Product Features: A list of features for the design team to explore with prototypes and validate through user testing.
Situation
Consumers are interested in acquiring vehicles without ownership, and vehicles on dealership lots are not generating optimal revenue.
Consumer Insights
Dealership Insights
Recommended Features
Contract my vehicles out on a monthly basis
Create discrete vehicle tiers with specific pricing
Charge a Mobility Contract differently than a Loaner Contract
Ensure the appropriate insurance is applied to the appropriate customer and contract
See Mobility Product for the product roadmap and prototype of these features.
Estimate the real-time value and future value of my fleet
Create contracts with customers and cars on a mobile device
Insight/Documentation into Mobility best practices from DealerwareSME’s
Only pay for features my dealership uses
Impact
The research supported the business hypothesis that consumers had an appetite for non-ownership vehicle models, which dealerships could serve by expanding their operations and leveraging existing digital tools. The business resolved to proceed with the recommendation to expand the product roadmap by adding a feature that dealerships can use to test the model.
Additional Recommendations
Dealership Incentive Alignment: Recommended creating organizational models that share commissions across sales and service departments to prevent "interference" sentiment.
Dynamic Lifecycle Management: Suggested integrating systems that use market data to automatically recommend when a vehicle should move from a service loaner fleet to a subscription or sales program, to provide decision-making tools for dealerships.
Mobility Product Roadmap: Recommended scoping and developing a product feature so dealerships could quickly test the model with their customers and validate the expansion of the Dealerware product into mobility services like rental and subscription.