Research is at the heart of most successful human endeavor. It is possible to gather information about nearly everything, including trends in the tastes and preferences for automobiles. If you run a local car dealership, automotive market research should be part of your general operational strategy.

As the third decade of the twenty-first century approaches, reliance on the old, obsolete, and outdated practices of the twentieth century can lead to the decline and eventual death of your business. You must shift your mental model and become completely and consumer-driven focused. The phrase itself is bandied about often in meetings, emails, and other events in which business aims and plans are devised. Talking about it, however, is not the same as making it happen. The latter requires decisive action.

Automotive market research has proven itself an effective tool to understanding what car buyers want. One of its pillars includes competitive assessment. This enables you to determine and evaluate what the most successful rivals are doing correctly. You may not be able to entirely adopt the model they use, but learning how it produces the sales volume that it does may help you formulate your own ideas by creating a framework.

Using this type of research will also help you determine various value propositions. Put simply, this exercise casts all of your activities in the light of value—that is, each product and process is assessed according to how well it advances the goals, performance, and profitability of the company.

Direct consumer feedback is another pillar of automotive market research. You should make it one of the major tasks and all-consuming focuses of your executive team to find out what your market believes about your brand and the vehicles you sell. It is the best way to make the case to your suppliers about what the people who come into your shop to buy cars actually want.

Online-only car dealerships, such as Carvana and Vroom, are already using market research to develop and fine-tune their business. These are online car e-commerce companies that actively promote the idea of skipping local car dealerships to shop in their stores. You may be losing business to them to a certain market segment. You should take action now to begin taking advantage of the way shopping for automobiles have changed.

Automotive market research gives you the means to employ virtual retail in the same flexible, easy, and effective way that they are. It can provide you with the insights you need to transform your business so that consumers can shop for their vehicles online.

The fact is that in 2017 most people live their lives from their laptops and mobile phones. They do a great deal of their researching and shopping, including car purchases, on the Internet. And increasingly, they will work only with those dealerships that make this process simple and straightforward.

The bottom line is this: market research provides a higher level of insights for understanding what, how, and why people are buying. It can also give you an empirical foundation for making certain cars available, as well as help you employ an online strategy that will help you compete against not just local, but virtual competitors.

Is your car dealership looking for ways to increase your competitive advantage against local and online competitors? See how the use of automotive market research can help you improve and grow your business.