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Tony Loxton

BLIX, the innovative company that tracks floor traffic for auto showrooms using mobile phone signals, is in the process of rolling out a new feature for OEMs and dealers that can track shoppers who have been in dealerships of other brands or went on to visit dealerships of competitors’ brands.

In what is claimed as a world first for the automotive industry, the new service means that OEMs and individual dealers can see exactly which other brands and showrooms customers visit in their buying journey.

Blix uses the roaming mobile phone signal of a phone to identify the location of an individual phone without identifying the actual person carrying the phone.

The system uses WiFi sensors installed within dealerships to track mobile phones as customers drive past a dealership, walk past, enter the forecourt or enter the showroom. It then tracks the amount of time the person (phone) spent in the dealership and is a valuable measure of the level of engagement the dealer achieved with that customer.

Now the company is able to track what other dealerships of another brand shoppers have been in before they arrived in a client’s showroom and what other dealerships of another brand they visited after they left a client’s showroom.

Developed by Blix managing director Tony Loxton, the customer tracking system is proving invaluable for OEMs and dealers in measuring responses to advertising and promotions, as well as monitoring the effectiveness of dealerships in greeting and engaging walk-in customers and converting them into buyers.

The system is also used by a wide range of retailers in fields other than the car industry.

Mr Loxton said “any dealership that has our system installed can now opt in to see which other brands and showrooms the customer is also shopping”.

He told GoAutoNews Premium: “We have always been able to show the numbers turning up in different showrooms within the same brand – that has always been part of the product – but now we are able to tell them what per cent of shoppers move between their showrooms and go to other participating Blix customer showrooms of another brand.”

The new service only applies to Blix customers which have elected to take part in the service and is most effective where the system is installed across the full brand network.

Blix dashboard arrows shows inbound and outbound walk-ins. The thicker the arrow, the greater the number.

Mr Loxton said that the company’s data shows that an average of 24 per cent of customers visit showrooms of more than one brand within the Blix customer base, although some brands can be much higher and others are can be considerably lower.

He said that within the brands, the level of cross-shopping between retailers of the same cars is typically around 3.8 per cent.

Mr Loxton said a number of OEMs have already opted in but it is early days. He said there was very wide interest in the cross-shopping feature and Blix was confident that once the various brands see other OEMs are benefiting from the intelligence then others will follow.

“Those that remain outside this add-on to the system will not be able to see whether their customers are going to other showrooms and other brands would not be able to see if their customers are coming to your showrooms,” he said.

“Using a fictitious example, the system can show that for FCA, say, 15 per cent of all their walk-in traffic also goes to Hyundai, 11 per cent goes to another brand.

“Then, on an individual showroom level, as an example, we can identify that of City Hyundai’s traffic, 17 per cent also goes to the City Jeep showroom and 10 per cent to City Kia. And we split that out to show did they go there before they visited City Jeep or did they go there after they visited City Jeep?

“So we are not only giving it to them on an aggregated basis of total brand level but we are also giving it to them on a show-by-showroom level.

“For the OEMs it gives them real, live visibility on which brands are being cross-shopped with their brand the most because in reality there is really no other way of them knowing that.

“Before Blix made this available, all they really get is sales numbers and they have no idea of what lead up to that sale. So we are giving them a view of that information higher up the sales funnel.

“The information can be very revealing. A brand may not actually realise that the brand they think is the most shopped by its buyers before purchasing is not the one they think it is. They might presume it is FCA but we could show that it was, for example, Hyundai.

“And as you release new models these brand visit trends will change.

“At a showroom level we are giving the dealer the ability to understand that perhaps their biggest competitors are not brands A, B and C down the road but they are getting a big crossover from a brand D dealership further afield.

“So this is able to give them insights as to who their actual competitors really are and also gives them a way to measure if any competitive moves made to take these competitors on are having an effect.

“At the moment all this is just conjecture by the dealers. They are simply guessing.

“So our data gives them the information they need to plan competitive advertising now they know who they should aim it at as well as the ability to test the advertising effectiveness though any changes in their traffic data.

“It also helps their sales staff understand that they need to educate themselves on the comparative features of brands that are showing up as being cross-shopped more than the dealership realised.”

In another fictitious example, Mr Loxton said that near his office are Toyota, FCA and Mazda dealerships which might believe that these are the most likely to be cross-shopped when in fact Blix data could show them that one most likely to be cross-shopped is the Subaru dealership further away in Docklands.

“So they would need to make sure their salespeople know more about selling against Subaru than selling against, for example, Toyota. It is really quite a functional insight on what to train their sales team whereas before it was all just guesswork.

“This means we can tell a dealer that, for example, did you know that you had 167 walk-ins to your showroom last month and that 47 of them turned up in a particular showroom down the road?

“If you were getting a lot of shoppers coming to you from other showrooms and you were getting very few people going to other showrooms after they had been with you then you would have a pretty good idea that you were doing something right.

“And that is where we are able to give dealers great insight. Are they visiting those showrooms before they come to me or after? That raises a critical insight for that dealership.

“We have provided that data inter-brand for quite a while but never across cross brands,” Mr Loxton said.

Footnote: The Blix system can only identify a particular phone and does not have the ability to identify in any way the actual user of the phone.

By John Mellor

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