Automotive analytics firm S&P Global Mobility recently announced the acquisition of digital retailing platform Market Scan. On this episode of Inside Automotive the Managing Director and Vice President of S&P Global Mobility, David Mondragon and Rusty West, the President and CEO of Market Scan, join host Jim Fitzpatrick to discuss their plans after the merger, and what they envision for dealers in the online car sales space.
Mondragon and West note that one of the primary purposes of the acquisition was to allow S&P Global Mobility to offer a more comprehensive retailing package for its OEM and dealer clients. Many companies in manufacturing and retailing have a patchwork assembly of tools to manage their business operations, using multiple platforms throughout the day. By bringing Market Scan on board, these businesses will be able to access all of these services in one place. “The acquisition of Market Scan really builds out our portfolio so we can have an end-to-end solution for a lot of the OEMS and a lot of the dealers…” explains Mondragon.
West notes that existing Market Scan clients will not be impacted by the acquisition, other than gaining access to an even wider selection of tools and services. S&P Global Mobility customers, however, will have brand new access to pricing calculations, which Mondragon notes were missing from the company’s offerings.
"Post COVID about 30% [of dealers] had moved transactions online, we think the industry and consumer demand is about 80%." - David MondragonOn digital retailing, S&P Global Mobility remains confident that its prevalence will only grow in the auto market. Although many dealers began to add limited web-based services as a result of COVID, the consumer response in the years since has been so overwhelmingly positive that many businesses have started to expand their digital retail options to include online transactions. While the rate of adoption remains far below optimal levels, Mondragon notes that the industry will be forced to change sooner rather than later. By 2025, younger, internet-savvy generations are expected to comprise a majority of the car market’s customer base. Storeowners who hope to accommodate this population shift will need services like Market Scan to get ahead of the competition.
Apart from making car buyers happy, S&P Global Mobility’s expanded digital retailing suite provides another benefit; data. Using information obtained from analytics tools, dealers can build accurate customer profiles, allowing them to automatically recommend vehicles to digital buyers based on their interests and demographics. With the massive amount of information obtained through web-based data collection and sharing, dealers can also make more educated decisions in terms of inventory management and marketing.
Although the merger represents an end to three decades of Market Scan as an independent company, with West’s continued leadership, and the continually expanding repertoire of S&P Global Mobility’s services, the auto industry still has much to look forward to.
