Can you imagine a book shop without books inside, a grocery shop without any grocery items or MotorBeam.com without any news about automobiles? It’s quite difficult to imagine so and it’s natural. Similarly a car dealership also does not make any sense if it does not have any car to show off. However now it’s time to change our perceptions as Mahindra is all set to come up with a concept called Virtual Showroom. Yes, it would be another first from Mahindra. The idea is that future Mahindra dealerships will be kind of experience zones which will showcase everything about their cars in totally different – high definition way.
The concept behind this is, Mahindra will be preparing a stage where a layman (we will address him Mr. X) walks in and will be taken through an interactive tour about their cars. Loads of information in variety of formats will be poured onto Mr. X. Then the technical person from Mahindra will attend to him, but the interesting part is the technical person would be sitting in Mahindra central location. Some might think what is so different about this, we are seeing video conferencing for ages now.
However this experience would be a step ahead of that and it will use technology called Tele-Presence. This technology will give Mr. X, a feel of sitting next to that tech guy. Some are saying that it may include some touch and feel experience also with the help of actuators simulating those effects. The main motto of tech guy will be not to force Mr. X to buy any Mahindra but to make him aware of technological advancements in Mahindra vehicle, what are benefits of having those various technologies, how it stands against the competition, etc.
After all these if Mr. X is interested he can have a test drive of the vehicle. Then that Mr. X can decide about being Mr. Customer for Mahindra. The outcome of this whole exercise may or may not turn up the sales volume drastically but it will improve the overall buying experience for sure.
Mahindra is having some hidden motive behind all this apart from selling their cars. Like, it will eliminate the factor of error in information being delivered to Mr. X and consistency of information will be maintained between all of Mr. Xs, Ys and Zs. As the sales person in present dealerships is oriented towards only selling the car and hence may give false promises to Mr. X which may later spoil the experience of owning a Mahindra and stain the image of company.
This risk also can be eliminated as information will be provided by a team of technical guys having thorough knowledge about automobiles. Then one more advantage associated with this is such showrooms can be opened anywhere like malls, public places and will not have space constraints. Also use of such high end technology will lure many to visit the showroom at least once.
One such showroom is currently functional in NCR and Mahindra is going through the trial phase. It is very surprising to see that Mahindra didn’t reveal anything in front of the media yet. We are also not having any clear idea about when exactly this thing will go live but we can confidently say it is going to happen soon.
