Online car clearing house Autoweb.com has announced a new revenue sharing program as a way of optimizing its marketing spend. It works like this. Autoweb has established relationships with 4000 auto dealers around the USA, giving them extensive training in the form of an audio tape, a manual and a seminar. When visitors to the Autoweb site are referred to a member dealer, the company gets a $29 kickback. Of that money, about $2 is earmarked for marketing. Accordingly, when an affiliated site refers a customer to Autoweb, and that customer goes on to make an inquiry, the $2 will now be remitted to the forwarding site. Existing affiliates include USA Today and Car & Driver Online. With revenue sharing in place, the company hopes to win more. Autoweb’s goal is simple. The company wants to drive a paradigm shift in homogenizing the way cars are bought and sold across the USA. Co-founder and executive vice president Payam Zaman calls it the McDonalds-ization of the auto buying process. He points out that there are 67 Ford dealerships in the Chicago area. There should only be six or seven, he asserts. By directing Autoweb inquiries only to the six or seven AutoWeb- approved dealers, Zaman says he wants to put the inefficient mom and pop operations out of business. If customers don’t like Autoweb prices they can go elsewhere – as long as there is an elsewhere. Autoweb’s strategy should work fine as long as that audio tape really does instill dealers with the customer-service ethic. Sadly, when a ComputerWire staffer mailed Autoweb for a quote, his local dealer completely failed to respond. A complaint to Autoweb elicited the dealer’s phone number and the advice to call direct, which more or less defeats the purpose of having an Autoweb in the first place. Isn’t it always the way? It just takes one or two bad apples to spoil things for everyone.
