Quotes from an interview Solis did with Hyundai CMO Dean Evans are featured in a Clickz article by Jacqueline Dooley titled “How customer behavior is helping Hyundai change the buying experience.”

Last August, Brian Solis, Principal Analyst at Altimeter, spoke with Dean Evans, the CMO of Hyundai Motor America to discuss how rapidly evolving customer behavior has motivated Hyundai to change their approach to selling cars.

The interview with Evans was conducted for a study titled, Digital Experience Innovators: How Leading CMOs and DMOs are Modernizing Experiences and Brands for Digital-First Customers. The study reveals that top brands like Hyundai are investing heavily in technology aimed at modernizing the customer journey.

The traditional automotive sales model involves the customer visiting the dealer and negotiating around price points that they’re not fully aware of, but this model is changing based on the availability of information that informs the customer journey. Among other topics, Solis asked how this has affected Hyundai’s approach to reaching people at critical moments during the buying cycle.

“We’re getting good at understanding in-market buying intent which is tells us we need to spend more of our media dollars putting our value proposition in front of people that are shopping,” explains Evans. “As audience identification gets better, we get better at reaching people at the right time.”

Solis questioned Evans about how he was able to convince Hyundai executives to introduce these new shopper programs in such an established industry. “Some of the ways that we convinced stakeholders to test this process was through customer surveying,” explains Evans. “We brought everyone to the table and said we don’t have anything to lose by merging what we think is the best of both worlds—customers and salespeople. We have technology tools that can help the customer along the way and a brand that can support them.”

Per Solis, research shows that for similar products, customers will pay upwards of 25% percent more for a product if they know they’ll get a better experience throughout the purchasing journey and in the product lifecycle.

Read the entire article here: https://www.clickz.com/how-customer-behavior-is-helping-hyundai-change-the-buying-experience/255151/