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Originally Posted by SteveinArizona
Really? A dealer trying to pressure a car buyer into purchasing an extended warranty? Does that really happen? Do you mean that the dealerships are not acting in our best interests? Shocking!
More seriously, in the US a few days ago a large group of major multinational corporations said that they owed service not just to their stockholders but also to other stakeholders like employees and customers. Think it will ever roll down to dealerships?
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lol yeah. It is like saying the sun is bright or that water is wet. Dealerships are amongst the worst...
This isn't directly correlated to Dimon's comments on the need for the business community to focus more broadly than their current narrow definition of profits (shocking that shift is taking this long...). It is more related to the real market trends impacting automakers going forward.
The non-luxury brands are packing more and more luxury features into their cars as intense competition has forced automakers to move more and more of their key features to third party suppliers who sell to every other automaker. As a result, everyone has all of the same tech features and non-luxury brands offer high end features like leather interiors. Couple that with technology moving rapidly toward turning the driver into a passenger and luxury differentiation isn't going to get easier for automakers.
Luxury carmakers have no choice, IMHO, but to go back to luxury basics. The definitive differentiator between luxury and non-luxury in most industries is quality of service and relationships. So far, luxury carmakers have ignored this. I expect we'll see this change a ton soon otherwise these brands will eventually fade away.