High-energy warning

Editor’s note: This article comes from the WeChat public account “Operation Research Society” ( ID: U_quan).

Automobile trading profiteering inside, user information is fancy reselling...
  Some time ago, Xian Ge wanted to buy a car. After checking the reserve price on a car information app, it took less than 10 minutes, and the 4S shop called.

The store said that there is this car in the store and asked if the man should go to test drive. The front foot just checked the reserve price and received the call without looking at other models. This efficiency, our editorial department is all amazing.

The next few days, in addition to this 4S shop in Shanghai, Yin Ge has received calls from other stores. The store will also determine if Xiange has bought a car at the beginning. If there is no car, I hope it is a car. Going to test drive, and getting more and more calls.

Speaking back, although the Yin brother really wants to buy a car, it is not too repugnant to receive a 4S shop call, but the personal information is given to other businesses by the platform, and my heart is still uncomfortable.

So are these car platforms blatantly selling personal information? What are their profit models? Today’s article, let’s take a look at the insider trading of the automotive industry.

01 Your message is very valuable

Open a car information official website, choose a favorite car, you need to enter “name”, “personal number” to get the reserve price, this freely contributes personal information to the platform operation, but the platform provides paid To a third party.

The inside of the car trade is profitable, the user information is fancy resold...

Under the “Get the reserve price”, there is a line of the default small word “I agree to the personal information protection statement.”

The statement states that:

We share it with the relevant car dealers, manufacturers and groups and use it within the legal and legitimate scope; you agree to waive the receipt and/or use of the above personal information in accordance with the provisions of this legal notice. All claims, liabilities and losses resulting from or resulting from the disclosure and use of the information.

The inside of the car trade is profitable, the user information is resold by fancy...

According to this default clause, the user has already given personal information to the platform while “acquiring the reserve price”. The platform has the right to give the user information to the dealer, and the user also agrees not to the behavior of the platform or the car dealer. Responsible.

The platform calls such personal information a “sales lead”, which is packaged as “retailer subscription service, advertising to individual dealers advertising users and other value-added services”.

I interviewed two practitioners in the automotive industry and determined the so-called “sales clues”, which are the customer information obtained after the inquiry. The profit model of selling data seems to have become an open “secret” in the automotive industry.

In terms of financial reports, the annual revenue of the platform in 2008 was 7.233 billion yuan, of which the sales revenue of the sales channel was 2.872 billion yuan, accounting for 40% of the total revenue.

The inside of the car trade is profitable, the user information is resold by fancy...

A car platform 2018 earnings report

In fact, as early as 2014, in the financial report of the platform, you can see the relevant income of “sales leads”. The accumulated revenue in 5 years has reached 9.647 billion yuan. It can be said that a publicly sold information is sold. Listed company.

The inside of the car trade is profitable, the user information is resold by fancy...Automotive trading insider profit, user information is fancy reselling...

In addition to the Yuntong Group, the Huge Group and the Yongda Group have also followed suit.

In recent years, the auto market has been sluggish. The rising membership fees have made dealers’ budgets more tense. With the emergence of many auto information platforms, no one can be a big one.

Unexpectedly, in addition to selling sales leads, the car platform has a more important monetization model:selling ad slots.

03 Buy Banner to send sales lineSend

From the second quarter of 2019, the revenue of media services increased from 930 million yuan in the same period in 2018 to 1.028 billion yuan, an increase of 10.5%, thanks to the information they provided. Product portfolio.

Sell banner locations to provide brand exposure, earning tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands in one location. According to 4S store sales staff, the price of different brands is different.

The platform does not sell banner locations alone, but instead combines banners and leads for sale. Their sales model is like this, selling a banner location will give a certain amount of clues.

The inside of the car trade is profitable, the user information is resold by fancy...

Automobile Banner Advertising

However, some of the car information platform’s Banner location itself has no traffic, so how dare they promise quality and quantity?

According to industry insiders, the platform will withdraw some funds from the media service revenue, go to buy Baidu’s data service, and buy the car-related search keywords.

The inside of the car trade is profitable, the user information is resold by fancy...

A lot of users who buy a car for the first time don’t know much about the information channel. The first thing they think of is to search in Baidu. In this way, they will be directly drained to these platforms by Baidu’s search results, and they will leave clues after asking low prices.

04 Gray Trading, Guaranteed Deal

The business model that I talked about earlier is fairly formal. In some platforms, there are actually some gray transactions. This trading mode is to provide “guaranteed transactions” services.

The inside of the car trade is profitable, the user information is resold by fancy...

Unfortunately, this kind of “guarantee transaction” is just a piece of paper, not a guarantee of a real deal. how to say?

First of all, let me first come to the science sales method of 4S shop.

The sales department of 4S stores will be divided into online sales department and offline sales department. If the customer goes to the store through the online sales channel, this part of the sales will be returned to the online sales department; if the customer is through the offline channel, the achievement will be returned to the offline sales department.

However, according to the 4S shop partners we interviewed, the quality of the customers coming from the network is very poor, they will compare the prices of many homes, and the defense is also very strong.

The majority of 4S stores’ traffic sources are still old and new. After all, the car is a big commodity, not just a look at the Raiders can buy, the user is very focused on real feedback and word of mouth. In many cases, everyone will be more willing to go to a 4S shop recommended by a friend who has experience in buying a car.

In this case, a considerable number of users are natural traffic, that is, no offline sales personnel claim.

The platform will buy the order clerk of the 4S store in advance (the person who does the sales data entry), and change the source of these unclaimed traffic to “online” to create the illusion that these users are successfully trading through the platform.

However, industry insiders said that the source of this change is still relatively small, because the operation is relatively difficult. The more common method of pretending to be “high turnover rate” is to directly modify the transaction base.

Assuming that there are 1000 singles from the platform, but only 3, 4 singles have been sold, the turnover rate leader is certainly not satisfied. At this time, the logger will directly modify the cardinality of the platform.For example, if you change the 1000 to 600, you can double the transaction rate.

For the platform, the sales department reported the transaction rate high, and the leaders will think that the online sales channel is effective, so they can re-invest in these channels. As a resource replacement, the platform will increase the banner exposure for 4S, making the data look better (although these exposures may be “zombie users”).

When you see this, you may wonder why the orderer of the 4S store will “collaborate” with the platform. Isn’t this helping the outsiders to take advantage of their own cheap?

Because in addition to the gray income you can take, This is also the sales department is completing their own KPI. If the transaction rate is too low, the leader will think that the sales department (network sales channel) is not enough.

So, this can be said to be a mutually beneficial action for the platform and 4S shop staff.

05 Conclusion

From sales leads, selling members to selling brand exposures, to grey trading between platforms and dealers, I believe that through today’s article, everyone has a certain understanding of the automotive industry’s operating routines and business models.

In the process of preparing this article, we also learned from some insiders that these car platforms are actually less and less popular.

A lot of users know the hidden rules of “Consultation reserve price = leaked information”, they will be more inclined to go to some forums to do their homework, or find friends around to make recommendations.

After buying a car is a big deal, I hope that a small partner who buys a car plan can buy a favorite car.