Former Lookers and Inchcape UK boss James Brearley says AI is set to impact heavily on the used car market search.
Posting on LinkedIn he said there was a potential for dealers to reduce costs associated with advertising on aggregators.
“I will bet that most people reading this use an AI assistant daily or hourly including the retailers among you.
“Yet no one is really talking about AI and the used car market. Consumers are working out that the easy way to find the best used car for them is to ask CGPT or Claude to give them a list of potentials based on price mileage and distance.
“AI does not need to reference the aggregator alone it simply searches ALL listings.
“To spell it out… That means that retailer websites and aggregators may well become equal in the future.
“Pause for a moment and consider how potentially that reduces costs for a retailer it is significant, but it also means that the current data sources may become redundant.
No one can accurately predict “when” the change will bite but I think the “if” is a certainty now.
My advice to retailers out there is to quickly rethink your pricing methods, it is not too hard to work out that you only have to do what consumers do and automate search via AI.
“Of course, some retailers will stick to “running a sale event” or advertising in the local paper and hoping for the best on price, that is ok if your cars are all unique but if many of them are commodity cars I wish you the best of luck but I fear that you are a critically endangered species.”
