The key takeaways from the Auto Trader Retailer Awards
On the 17th of October, we celebrated the very best of automotive retailing at the Auto Trader Retailer Awards 2024. We head some of the latest industry trends and insights along with discovering who the top retailers are right now.
But what were the key takeaways from the event? Read on to find out.
AI is changing the game
One theme that emerged during the awards presentation is the way AI is changing retail.
In our presentation on our latest industry insights at the awards, we highlighted the following quote: “You know what the biggest problem with pushing all-things-AI is? Wrong direction. I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.”
We know that motor retailing is complex.
Just think about some of the steps you have to take before you can even advertise a car for sale. It takes on average 28 minutes to build a car advert, check the spec, write the description, order photos into something that will get the buyer engaged.
The motor retailing equivalent of “laundry and dishes” is “ad creation and photo ordering”, things we have to do repeatedly and which need to be done well.
For the “art and writing” part, that’s almost anything you don’t get much time to do such as maybe focusing on aftersales, build a commercial vehicles business, analyse the data to really understand performance, work with people on their development, or even spend more time just doing things I love to do.
We made it clear that AI should be doing the stuff it’s really good at, and letting retailers spend more time doing the things they’re really good at.
It was great to see that many of the retailers at the awards were already using AI to great effect, achieving efficiencies that were simply not possible before the explosion of AI. In fact, one of this year’s winners, The Clever Car Collection, has put AI at the very centre of their business.
Our awards made it clear that AI is set to change the game when it comes to retail and that those retailers not embracing this technology do risk being left behind.
Work still needs to be done to diversify our industry
We were delighted to be joined by Julia Muir, founder of the Automotive 30% Club, to announce the winner of our inaugural Woman of the Year Award. But before announcing the winner, Julia shared some profound insights into why we need such awards.
Julia Muir with our Woman of the Year Award winner Kate Carter of eStar Truck & Van
She stated that “half of our customers are female, yet in a study with netmums, only 14% of over 40,000 female customers surveyed said they would dare go into a car showroom unaccompanied by a man, reporting discomfort and vulnerability within the male-dominated space. We therefore need to have a better gender balance in the showroom and in leadership roles to remove this stress for women.
Our cars and safety systems are designed around a reference male, so women must speak like men to get voice recognition systems to work, and must alter the driving position so much that they are 17% more likely to die in a car accident than men and 73% more likely to be injured. We also therefore need to have a better gender balance in design and engineering to make cars that work as well for women as they do for men.
Last year our retailer Automitve 30% Club members reached 23.5% key leadership roles filled by women, and 25% across their whole organisations, significantly higher than the whole industry average of 7% and 17.5%. So, the Club members who share best practice in areas such as inclusive leadership, recruitment, training and working practices to make sure they stop excluding high performing women are doing significantly better than their peers. They already have a strategic competitive advantage over other retailers due to the employee engagement and customer satisfaction improvements, but women are still largely in support functions with less influence on business-critical areas and the in-person customer interaction.
We need more talented women in operational leadership roles in retailers because men and women working together with their complementary characteristics and different lived experiences and insight will ensure the automotive sector instinctively serves the diverse and gender-balanced customer population better. This will then attract other women to join and progress within our companies – because if they can see it, they can be it.
Challenges ahead, but the future is bright
We spoke at the event about the challenges with the new car market and how these challenges look set to persist into the future. But with interest rates set to fall we could well see some growth in new car.
But used cars remain strong. Days to sell are currently sitting at 27, 4 days faster than in 2023 and for some age cohorts well below three weeks. We’ve seen records broken through this year, cars selling faster than ever before and transactions up 4% year-on-year.
But what gave us the most confidence in the future was seeing the calibre of all of the award winners and finalists. They showcased the very best of our industry and how dynamic and resilient retailers really are.
You can view the full list of winners right here.