DEARBORN, MICH. (02/25/2000) - Ford Motor Co. this week aired plans to get its 5,000 car dealers on the same e-commerce page.
The broad cooperative Web marketing effort will include designing Web sites for individual dealers that have a common look and feel, and enabling the dealers to offer a similar set of online services, from insurance policies to car sales. To do this, Ford is taking the unusual step of setting up an as-yet-unnamed joint venture with Trilogy Software, which helped design the current Ford.com site.
With Trilogy's founder and CEO Chris Porch in charge, this new Austin, Texas-based venture is expected next month to begin providing Web design services to Ford, its dealers and perhaps other clientele. Ford isn't disclosing its investment in the joint venture, but not surprisingly, the company hinted the undertaking could go public in the future.
"We want to make sure our dealers have the tools to get leads and make sales on the Internet," said Brian Kelley, president of Ford's ConsumerConnect e-commerce division. While Ford's Web site BuyerConnection. com directs potential buyers to local dealers, the site doesn't support the same type of e-mail negotiation available at rival General Motors' GMBuyPower.com site. That site is where 80% of GM's 7,700 dealers now list their inventories, get customer e-mail and check visitor Web statistics on what cars get the most page views.
The larger issue is how far the big car manufacturers will go to get dealers to support a corporate Web brand. Today, GM dealers have free reign in building Web sites. However, not unlike Ford, GM and its e-Dealers Advisory Council are considering whether to adopt a common look and feel for local dealers, a GM spokeswoman says.
Another competitor, Daimler-Chrysler, has a Web site to generate leads to about 40% of Chrysler's 4,000 dealers on Chrysler car models, but so far the company lacks a unified global Web strategy to reflect its merger with Daimler-Benz.
Ford's upcoming Web makeover might also lead to new pricing mechanisms. "We are looking at invoice pricing for the Internet," Kelley hinted this week. That could mean new cars might be sold more inexpensively on the Web than off.
Analysts say Ford's effort may improve its brand consistency on the Web. Some local Ford dealers' Web sites are so amateurish "they look like their high school sons and daughters must have done them," says Gartner Group Research Director Rob DeSisto.
But the danger is, local individuality could give way to a monolithic look.
DeSisto also warns that Trilogy's strength is in a tool that lets online shoppers put together a desired car model. But he says the company is hardly in a position to provide the wide range of Web services to dealers envisioned by Ford.
"Trilogy's technology footprint will fall far short of what's needed here," DeSisto asserts, pointing out that dealers will need e-mail, customer response management software, mail-campaign software and much more.
Lessons from Nissan
Global car manufacturer Nissan last year struggled with the daunting task of a Web makeover for purposes of giving potential car buyers a more unified view of car dealerships. Nissan dealers traditionally did their own thing on the Web, but Nissan management decided this was too fragmented an approach in terms of quality and branding.
Nissan is divided into three regional centers - Europe, Japan and North America. For Nissan, the biggest headache in the search for a global Nissan Web brand has been that the nissan.com and nissan.net domain names are held by Nissan Computer, which is now entwined in a trademark dispute with the car maker in a California court.
"This has been a huge drag," says Gary Larsen, manager of brand communications in Europe for the car maker, which had to use nissaneurope.com for his region.
With so many country, language, tax and price differences in Europe, another problem has been maintaining a distinct local flavor on Nissan Web sites while making it easier to find car information. Systems integrator Razorfish has created a Web-based map of Europe for Nissan that lets viewers click on France, for instance, to be linked to nissanfrance.com.
Nissan's new European Web look has meant that local dealers had to agree to turn over control of their Web site content and management to Nissan Europe.
"They felt this was pragmatic, and they agreed to do it," Larsen says. "We now have these microsites in numerous languages so every national Nissan site can link into these."
Dealers now exchange Web files with Nissan's central command for Europe in Amsterdam. While buyers can now configure the Nissan car they want online and get a quote for it, they cannot buy cars via the Web. But Nissan hints that online car sales are on a road it may take in the future.