SELLING CARS

Evening Star, Issue 20988, 30 December 1931, Page 3

SELLING CARS

LATEST AMERICAN WAY

A well-known American motor car corporation is making an interesting, if hazardous, experiment in selling its product. It is reverting to the practice of the automobile industry when it was in its infancy, and selling direct to the public by mail instead of through a distributor-dealer organisation. By cutting out the middlemen it has been able to reduce the selling price of a car, greatly eliminating ’almost the entire cost of distribution and making a strong appeal, it is hoped, to the consumer. The company realises that there are a great many difficulties in the way of direct selling, and by way of overcoming them it is promising buyers their money back if within forty-eight hours after their cars have reached them and before the cars have been driven 100 miles they decide that they did not get what they thought they wore _ buying. Moreover, to meet tho complaint that without distributor-dealers customers will not have available service facilities, such as other companies maintain through their distributor-dealers, the company has arranged to have service needs met by licensed service stations. The outconie of the experiment is bound to be watched with great interest by other companies, most of which are far from convinced that it will win public support. In the view of tho industry generally, agents arc allessential in selling cars, not only bccauso of their effectiveness in pushing sales but because of the efficient main-

teaance service they supply; and service is in great demand in these days when many motorists know little or nothing about the machines they have, apart from the actual driving of them. Another question provoked by the company’s experiment is how will a public seemingly addicted to trading-in old cars when buying new vehicles react to the deprivation of its bargaining rights. Under the trade-in system, agents, with a largo discount from factory prices to give a leeway, have been able to make allowances on the cars turned in that were so absurdly large as to constitute an' almost irresistible lure to thp bargain hunter. The “ bargain ” presented was often more apparent than real, but a student of business psychology would have no doubt of the strength of the lure. Still - another difficulty that will have to be offset, with the many others, by the reduction in price, is the loss by the prospective purchaser of a car of the chance to look it over at leisure and try it out on the road before paying for it, or actually committing himself to buying it. Moreover, it will not be possible for those who prefer to pay on the instalment plan to turn the old car in for a first payment, instead of paying cash.