Mercedes-Benz India has introduced a customer-facing sales model for its prospective customers that promises to provide a ‘seamless’ and ‘transparent’ car buying experience via a novel concept, named ‘Retail of the Future’ (ROTF). In fact, the brand claims that this initiative is the biggest project of its kind in 27 years of the journey since it first came to the country.
From now onwards, the customers will be able to place an order for a new Mercedes-Benz car through this new e-retail system and complete the entire car buying procedure on its website. Mercedes-Benz has allowed its customers to view the centralised stock in the entire inventory as well as their availability countrywide. Additionally, ROTF also enables customers to find out the future production pipeline for the next three months.
Basically, before booking any vehicle, customers can check the national stock availability of every model, compare car prices, and find out the exact on-road cost according to their pincode. To make a purchase, a customer has to pay a booking amount of Rs 50,000. Once a reservation is made, a VIN will be generated for the customer. In the interim, the customer will get a fourteen day window to complete their order and documentation.
In the process, upon order finalisation, document verification will be carried online with end-to-end encryption, as per the carmaker. Once the customer has made full payment, the company will sent a final invoice to the customer thereafter. Having said that, dealerships remain the first point of contact for the customers who will have purchased their cars via ROTF. In addition, the dealerships will continue to look after delivering vehicles, represent the brand in the market and improve customer relationships, says Mercedes-Benz.
On this occasion, Martin Schwenk, Managing Director and CEO, Mercedes-Benz India, said, “Today, we are proud to implement the ‘Retail of the Future’ in India after successfully establishing a robust digital backbone, which will support this significant transition in our retail business. ROTF is a unique customer centric business model, which caters to the evolving trends of our customers, while empowering our Franchise Partners by significantly reducing their financial and operational risks in the market.”
