Connect with us

Business

From research foundation to the award-winning WeaveSphere tech conference

With its “weaving together” of academia and industry, WeaveSphere remains the only event of its kind.

Published

on

Dr. Vio Onut
Share this:

It was a moment he’ll never forget.

Dr. Iosif Viorel (Vio) Onut, the principal research and development strategist at IBM Canada’s Advanced Studies (CAS), was listening to a team of product architects share details of a challenge that had stumped the room. Also in attendance were 20 university professors who listened to their presentation to see if they could find a solution.

Then the ‘wow’ moment happened.

“Hey listen,” Onut remembers hearing one of the professors say. “This is not a new problem. In fact, it was solved in the 1970s, and this is what you need to do.”

The professor went on to outline the solution, as well as add new ideas based on more current research.

“Without that type of interaction, we could have been stuck on something that had already been solved,” Onut says. “Professors know what’s happening all the time, so they bring expertise. On the other hand, industry professionals can figure out what is practical to do and implement.”

That interaction was a single moment in time, but Onut says it’s become a common occurrence at the WeaveSphere technology conference where researchers, developers, tech leaders, founders, and investors “weave” ideas and research into reality.

Industry and academia ‘weave’ the future of technology

When you’re passionate about multi-discipline collaboration, it’s only natural that you’ll be a person that wears many hats. In addition to overseeing R&D for CAS — where there are currently 63 research and development projects on the go — Onut is also an adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa, and co-director of the uOttawa – IBM Cyber Range that is in development at the university.

He’s also the chair of the WeaveSphere conference that he attended for 12 years before taking up an organizer role five years ago.

WeaveSphere — a collaboration between IBM’s academic and research technology conference (CASCON), and Evoke’s industry-focused developer conference — has become one of the largest technology conferences in Canada.

This year the event will take place November 15-17 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in Toronto, and is expected to attract more than 2,000 attendees, 300+ speakers, and 100+ startups. 

At its core, WeaveSphere weaves academics and industry to create “innovation that matters.” This convergence, Onut says, is key to the conference’s success.

“When there is communication between these worlds, amazing things happen,” Onut says. “If you just have the professors, or you just have the industry, you don’t have that ripple effect of ideas. When you put those brilliant minds in one room, and they start talking with each other, we see enhancements and products that we couldn’t even dream of alone. That’s the key to success for us.”

Three decades of ‘innovation that matters’

WeaveSphere, now in its 32nd year, has undergone a unique evolution. 

It started with a group of researchers gathering in 1990 to work and share ideas. In 1991 the first CASCON event was held at the IBM Toronto Lab in Markham, Ontario in Canada. And over the course of the next three decades it has grown to become the country’s premier computer science and software engineering conference.

In 2006 the IBM Center for Advanced Studies team won the prestigious NSERC Leo Derikx Synergy Award for Innovation, an award that recognizes partnerships in natural sciences and engineering research and development (R&D) between universities and Canadian industry.

A decade later, the same IBM Center for Advanced Studies team won the prestigious Distinguished Synergy Award from the IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional organization. The award was in recognition of the event’s collaboration model as influential to both the Canadian software research and industrial landscape, adopted in many CAS centers around the world.

“In Canada, there hasn’t been an academic conference like ours running for any number of years — let alone 30 years,” Onut explains. “That is a testament to our group’s commitment to the Canadian computer science and software engineering ecosystem.”

And today? With its “weaving together” of academia and industry, it remains the only event of its kind.

How WeaveSphere creates opportunities for students

As part of the community-building that’s at the core of the conference, WeaveSphere also sees heavy participation from both undergraduate and graduate students. As a component of the conference since its inception, you’ll see Masters and PhD students from 25+ universities in the event’s exhibit hall talking to industry attendees about their research.

This year, two new initiatives will also be part of WeaveSphere.

Education Day will take place on Day 1 of the conference, with 300+ students taking part in solving a variety of real-world problems using design thinking methodology, and teamwork. 

On the last day of the conference, WeaveSphere will offer STEM day, a version of “take your kid to work” day, where attendees will have the opportunity to bring their high school or university-age kid to the event for the day. A full slate of programming is in the works, featuring a leadership workshop and panel discussion on STEM careers and educational paths.

Keeping the bar high for content and speakers

While WeaveSphere has actively sought out more industry folks over the last five years, the conference has never lost its history and original purpose as a forum for real-life, active R&D projects.

When asked what he enjoys about WeaveSphere, Onut explains that it’s the event’s balance of being dedicated to world-class research, as well as commercialization opportunities for industry that he enjoys most.

“I think when you talk about a pure industry conference, it’s more led by sponsorship and…paying to be a speaker,” he says bluntly. “At our conference, we have committees that evaluate the benefit of having a particular presentation at the conference — does it align or doesn’t it? What is the speaker’s reputation? What is it that they are trying to do in that particular talk?” 

He continues, adding that “for our academic content we use the double-blind review process where reviewers do not know the names and affiliation of the authors and evaluate the work based on its pure merit. The evaluation is done by a Program Committee formed of 60+ professors and industry experts.”

In the end, as Onut says: “At our conference, technology prevails.”

DX Journal is an official media partner for WeaveSphere. We will share updates leading up to the event, and we’ll be live on location from November 15-17,2022. Join us and get your tickets at weavesphere.co.

Share this:

Business

Are realtors too valuable to be disrupted by technology?

Tens of billions of venture capital dollars go into proptech every year. But realtors remain critical middlemen for most consumers. Is this just the way it will always be? Here’s a look at how tech is changing residential real estate – and how it’s not.

Published

on

Share this:

The tech industry repeatedly sees itself as a disruptor — particularly of industries with inefficient models with unnecessary costs baked in.

Why shouldn’t real estate be a prime target for tech?

As Forbes notes:

“Real estate is the only mammoth-size market remaining in which middlemen (brokers/agents) have complete control of the process. The operative members of the transaction (buyers/sellers) are withheld from direct communication and limited in resources and transparency. They are at the mercy of the middlemen in a world where other industries are constantly being refreshed, redesigned, and automated.”

Still, Canadian (and American) realtors are, to date, disruption resistant. Canadian realtors extract billions in value every year for their work. This is just how real estate works in this country, but it is kind of odd. Especially because Canada’s housing crisis is exactly that: a crisis.

Canada needs to build 3.5 million extra homes by 2030 to ensure affordable housing for everyone living in the country. That’s on top of the expected build out of 2.3 million homes that are currently planned.

That’s a shocking number when you consider the United States, with ten times the population, is short a relatively modest 6.5 million homes.

This housing gap means some version of the following story is happening in Canada basically every single week:

A seller wants to put their home on the market. They sign with a realtor who shares data on how to price the property, photographs it, lists it on MLS and advertises it. Depending on the seller, the realtor may provide significant guidance on the process of selling a home. People tend to get nervous when they’re selling their single biggest asset.

Still, the whole process can be over in a matter of weeks — a win for sellers, presumably. Well, sort of.

This process can be efficient in a hot market, but it also leaves many sellers with an odd taste in their mouths as they watch their realtor and their buyer’s realtor walk away with commissions of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of their dollars.

So, why hasn’t tech made more headway in bleeding out these seemingly unnecessary costs for buyers and sellers?

It’s not for a lack of new models, innovation, and capital spending. Investors allocated more than $32 billion USD into proptech companies in 2021. (‘Proptech’ just means technology solutions that enable the buying and selling of residential and commercial real estate). By 2028, the global proptech market is expected to reach $64.3 billion USD.

The investment is there. But so are the realtors. So, what changes are happening?

Proptech platforms are creating more informed buyers and sellers

Consumers are seeing the results of the money that has poured into proptech over the last decade. During the home-buying frenzy that followed a certain pandemic, many buyers toured properties virtually, and made buying decisions without ever being inside the place they’d soon call home.

But that’s just the latest evolution of real estate technology for consumers. Much of the first wave of proptech has already become second nature for many of us. We all have access to powerful, data-driven tools and platforms to aid us when it’s time to buy or sell.

Just a few examples:

  • Zillow is a one-stop digital marketplace that serves home buyers and sellers, as well as renters and landlords. It goes well beyond MLS, with deep resources and functionality like property valuation estimates. It’s the largest real estate website in the U.S. with over 60 million monthly views – and it’s increasingly popular in Canada.
  • Redfin is a real estate brokerage that offers lower than standard brokerage fees for its agents to sell residential homes. The company operates in both Canada and the U.S.
  • Trulia is similar to Zillow but offers additional functionality like crime maps by area, neighborhood profiles, and estimated monthly property upkeep costs. Trulia was acquired by Zillow in 2014 but continues to run as a separate platform.
  • Bōde is a Canadian platform that enables sellers to list their properties for free. Then they market the listing on platforms like Zillow and MLS. When a buyer and seller connect, Bōde facilitates the sale of the home and charges a 1% fee (up to a maximum of $10,000) on the final sale price. No realtor is involved.

While consumers love platforms like these and are doing more research on their own, they still gravitate to realtors when it comes time to sell or buy. A recent CBC article noted that:

“While specific numbers are hard to come by, all indications suggest that private sales make up a tiny sliver of overall real estate deals in Canada. For example, For Sale By Owner recently had some 116 listings in all of Ontario, while some mid-sized cities in the province showed more than 1,000 on MLS.”

Change is coming for everyone – from buyers to sellers to realtors

Still, the forecasts suggest this initial wave of proptech innovation may lead to more significant changes in the years to come. 

A much-quoted Oxford University study from 2013 found that “automation is projected to replace 50% of all current jobs in the next two decades. The same study predicts automation is 86% likely to replace traditional “real estate sales agents” and 97% likely to replace “real estate brokers”.” By late 2020, technology had replaced over 60 million jobs in the U.S. alone, with the World Economic Forum predicting tens of millions more to come, with fully 50% of jobs done by machines by 2025. 

It’s clear that the rate of automation isn’t exactly slowing down.

Blockchain, the distributed ledger that promises to destroy unnecessary middlemen across industries, offers the potential ability to reduce the need for realtors, through its ability to protect against fraudulent activity through decentralized smart contracts. 

But widespread adoption of blockchain technology hasn’t happened in any major industry, much less a massive asset class like real estate. And blockchain alone doesn’t eliminate the need for home buyers and sellers to get expert counsel from someone during a transaction.

And AI has promise and potential, sure. It can already do things with data that no human can. But buyers and sellers seem to consistently value empathy, human interaction, negotiation skills, and a realtor’s personalized knowledge of a community or property type. This is especially true when someone is making the life-altering choice to buy or sell a house. If it was your house, would you want the robot or the person?

So far, most Canadians are choosing the person. (The same is even true with another major life purchase, as we’ve recently reported.)

But there are more changes afoot.

Think back to that theoretical seller that sees their house sold in days and in return sacrifices tens of thousands of dollars in commissions. Is that a good deal for them? Maybe not.

That insight is at the root of Bid My Listing, a new startup from entrepreneur Matt Proman and real estate bigwig Josh Altman.

Bid My Listing enables sellers to solicit bids from realtors to list their house. As Proman told Entrepreneur.com:

“I had a lot of agents knocking on my door, leaving their business cards that they wanted to represent me in the transaction.”

Proman thought his Long Island home would move quickly and signed a six-month exclusive listing agreement with an agent. “I waited and waited and waited,” he said. “And I watched two other houses sell on my block.”

“I said, ‘I will never, for any of my other houses, give my listing away for free. The next time the agents have to put their money where their mouth is and have skin in the game.

So, while realtors may exist long into Canada’s real estate future, tech may eventually create major changes in their roles and how they’re compensated. They’re likely to find themselves having to adapt to a changing landscape where buyers and sellers want more value for the commissions they pay on a real estate transaction.

If they’re willing to pay them at all.

Share this:
Continue Reading

Business

Tech agility and relationship building among pillars of digital transformation for CIOs, HBR report finds

A look at HBR’s recent report about the changing role of CIOs and building resilience in digital transformation

Published

on

Share this:

HBR recently released a report (sponsored by Red Hat as part of The Enterprisers Project), on the changing roles and landscapes of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) leading organizations through digital transformation

The goal? Resilience. 

Specifically, resilience in an organization’s people, business processes, and tech infrastructure. 

But don’t get too caught up in the tech just yet. As UC Dublin business professor Joe Peppard is quoted in the report, “digital transformation is less a technology challenge and more a leadership one.”

HBR shares how CIOs can step up to the plate with leadership that fosters resilience amidst digital transformation:

Adaptability for CIOs and the organizations they lead

Digital transformation is a response to change, whether that change is innovation, customer demands, or industry trends. Today’s CIO must prepare their organizations to adapt to those changes, specifically: 

  • Adapt new processes to speed up product development
  • Collaborate to create new business models
  • Respond faster to client demands
  • Experiment and pivot quickly
  • Attract and retain IT talent

To achieve all that, the role of CIO has quickly expanded its job duties. Indeed, 89% of CIOs feel their role has become “more important,” the report found, while 88% agree their role is the most “critical component” of their organization’s sustenance. 

What do these expanded duties look like, apart from leading adaptable organizations? The CIO is an educator, coach, strategic adviser, entrepreneur, relationship builder, and change agent. HBR even includes “evangelist” in the mix. 

Managing expectations, relationships, and talent

Communication and relationship building are increasingly important, even in a tech-dominated industry. HBR cites an IDC statement that CIOs will even out inflation, shortages, and other economic changes through negotiations and relationship building. 

Of course, that communication is vital internally as well. CIOs need to lead staff, managers, and executives through pivoting plans, unpredictable results, and changing expectations. How? Through empathy, a vital component in supporting a successful organization and successful professionals within one. This also includes fostering safety, diversity, personal growth, inclusion, and autonomy for experimentation, and learning from failures. 

Finally, there comes the talent — starting at recruitment, all the way to career development and flexible work arrangements for IT staff. 

Making tech more agile

CIOs can’t do this on their own. However, they can embrace transformation tools and support their organization using them. HBR cites a PwC study on strategies for adapting to new tech tools, including: 

  • Making an IT strategy more agile
  • Using infrastructure investment to move to the cloud
  • Leveraging data and analytics to inform strategic decisions

CIOs aren’t just responsible for securing the new tech. They also need to strategically and operationally decide how to best harness each tech’s capabilities. The answer comes from the entire organization, as business operations and IT become unsiloed to support better collaboration. 

Read the full report

Share this:
Continue Reading

Business

Why aren’t more people buying their cars online?

A 2021 Carfax survey found that only 8% of buyers want to buy their next new or used car online.

Published

on

Share this:

The Covid-19 pandemic drove us into quarantine and lockdowns, and if you happened to be in the market for a new or used car, you probably weren’t schlepping to a dealership to make the purchase in-person. Rather, online transactions increased, and some say that’s the direction automotive retail we’ll continue to go.

According to a study by Capital One Auto Navigator, 56 percent of car dealers stepped up their use of digital tools in response to the pandemic. A Think with Google article said 63 percent of auto purchasers would consider ordering their next car online.

Besides Tesla’s online-only sales, online car sales have been around for some time, with various outlets including Cardoor.ca, Canadadrives.ca, Clutch.ca, Carnex.ca, Carvana and Vroom. But the pandemic served “as a catalyst to accelerate this transformation,” said Jessica Stafford, Senior Vice President, Consumer Solutions, Cox Automotive.

A 2022 study from Cox revealed that 81 percent of car shoppers felt that learning about their car online “improved the overall buying experience.” That included locating a dealer, looking up prices, finding vehicle specs, financing qualifications, investigating insurance products, and more.

“Amazon has trained consumers to be accustomed to being able to order whatever they need, not considering where it came from so long as they receive it in a timeframe that suits them, the price is within their budget, and the item is returnable,” she said. “This macro trend is now influencing car purchasing behavior with consumers open to receiving their cars from somewhere beyond their local market, as long as other conditions are favorable. In fact, many consumers now expect this, and are willing to pay a premium for some of these services.”

Cox’s data reveals buyers who complete more than 50 percent of the car shopping journey online were the most satisfied among all buyers. Reinforcing this view, Vog App Developers is expecting web-based apps for car consumers to become more the norm. That’s confirmed in this piece by Semetrical, that said nearly half of consumers are using their mobile devices to research their new car. 

Unfortunately, the industry isn’t keeping up. OSF Digital reported that almost eighty per cent of dealerships’ websites lacked the functionality for proper vehicle searches, and just over five per cent had 360-view photographs of their stock.

Michael Carmichael, president and CEO of UpAuto.ca, said that though there’s a big push from auto makers and dealers to develop the online funnel, “there is very little demand. It’s the biggest solution looking for a problem.” He believes “the emotional tie to an auto purchase is reduced dramatically. People want to come to see the car themselves and they want a relationship with the seller.” 

On the one hand, the online factor “plays a big role in an educational perspective — people doing their homework, [getting] information, and lots of pictures, and detail.” 

On the other hand, however, there are too many drawbacks: “How does my child seat fit in the back? What if it’s a smoker’s car? You can return it, but who wants to go through that hassle? It’s a lot of money,” says Carmichael.  

And he may be right: according to a 2021 Carfax Canada survey, only eight percent of Canadian buyers of new or used vehicles want to buy their next vehicle online. 

One challenge he has faced is attempted digital fraud — two attempts in recent weeks — an issue he says is rampant. “There still has to be a signature, and someone has to validate that you are who you say you are,” noting that as a lingering problem with online sales. By the end of 2021, digital fraud had been twice the problem in Canada than anywhere else in the world.

Sam Lee, Carnex.ca’s finance manager, sees things differently. 

“Purchasing a vehicle online is very straightforward,” he said. “It includes the vehicle’s imperfections and often, a good return policy. “What I see is the best model would be a hybrid system,” or more of an omnichannel approach. “In-person dealerships are time-consuming with pushy salespeople.”

EpicVin has delivered vehicle history reports for car buyers and displays used cars online, while working with hundreds of dealerships. Alex Black, its Chief Marketing Officer, says that photographs of cars have improved over time, as sellers have become more marketing savvy. 

“Nowadays, using the VR technologies, one can even create a model of a perfect car and to order it. So we can definitely say that the world of technologies introduced significant changes in the online car selling process.” On this point, the US Automotive Dealership Benchmark Study saw a direct correlation of sales to VR availability.

Zach Klempf, founder and CEO of Selly Automotive, is an automotive market contributor who has been featured in CNBC, Forbes, and other outlets. 

“For the part of the industry where there is more wear and tear on the car, it gets hard to sell that entirely online,” he explained. “But if it’s a commodity like a brand new Camry or Corolla under warranty, no major incidents, there is a market for it. Some consumers go into dealerships 

and completely change their mind on the car they want to buy once they see it and physically drive it.”

But things are looking a bit shaky for the online car industry, with volatile economic factors, noted Geoff Cudd, the CEO and founder of Find the Best Car Price. “With a diminishing supply of vehicles for sale, and the highest interest rates seen in years, the average price of a car is out of reach for the typical buyer. This is hurting all dealerships, but especially the online dealerships who overpaid to acquire vehicles from customers and they are now being forced to downsize in order to stay afloat.”  

Betakit in January confirmed as such, reporting that layoffs have been increasing in the market. 

Clutch and Canada Drives recently announced staff cuts, citing poor economic conditions. A representative from Clutch blamed a variety of factors, including “rising rates, supply chain disruptions, and volatile pricing.” 

New York Times reported that Carvana took a quarterly loss of more than a half-billion dollars, and laid off four thousand staff. In the past year, used car values have dropped 20 percent, leaving dealers to offload stock for far less than they paid, according to the Times. Cox Automotive said that 2023 sales will likely be half of the year before.

It looks like in-person shopping is here to stay, at least in the foreseeable: “There is still a general resistance by dealerships to complete the entire transaction online. Most dealers still push for an in-person meeting where they are more confident that the sales process will result in additional sales of high-margin items for the dealership,” said Cudd.

The Covid-19 pandemic drove us into quarantine and lockdowns, and if you happened to be in the market for a new or used car, you probably weren’t schlepping to a dealership to make the purchase in-person. Rather, online transactions increased, and some say that’s the direction automotive retail we’ll continue to go.

According to a study by Capital One Auto Navigator, 56 percent of car dealers stepped up their use of digital tools in response to the pandemic. A Think with Google article said 63 percent of auto purchasers would consider ordering their next car online.

Besides Tesla’s online-only sales, online car sales have been around for some time, with various outlets including Cardoor.ca, Canadadrives.ca, Clutch.ca, Carnex.ca, Carvana and Vroom. But the pandemic served “as a catalyst to accelerate this transformation,” said Jessica Stafford, Senior Vice President, Consumer Solutions, Cox Automotive.

A 2022 study from Cox revealed that 81 percent of car shoppers felt that learning about their car online “improved the overall buying experience.” That included locating a dealer, looking up prices, finding vehicle specs, financing qualifications, investigating insurance products, and more.

“Amazon has trained consumers to be accustomed to being able to order whatever they need, not considering where it came from so long as they receive it in a timeframe that suits them, the price is within their budget, and the item is returnable,” she said. “This macro trend is now influencing car purchasing behavior with consumers open to receiving their cars from somewhere beyond their local market, as long as other conditions are favorable. In fact, many consumers now expect this, and are willing to pay a premium for some of these services.”

Cox’s data reveals buyers who complete more than 50 percent of the car shopping journey online were the most satisfied among all buyers. Reinforcing this view, Vog App Developers is expecting web-based apps for car consumers to become more the norm. That’s confirmed in this piece by Semetrical, that said nearly half of consumers are using their mobile devices to research their new car. 

Unfortunately, the industry isn’t keeping up. OSF Digital reported that almost eighty per cent of dealerships’ websites lacked the functionality for proper vehicle searches, and just over five per cent had 360-view photographs of their stock.

Michael Carmichael, president and CEO of UpAuto.ca, said that though there’s a big push from auto makers and dealers to develop the online funnel, “there is very little demand. It’s the biggest solution looking for a problem.” He believes “the emotional tie to an auto purchase is reduced dramatically. People want to come to see the car themselves and they want a relationship with the seller.” 

On the one hand, the online factor “plays a big role in an educational perspective — people doing their homework, [getting] information, and lots of pictures, and detail.” 

On the other hand, however, there are too many drawbacks: “How does my child seat fit in the back? What if it’s a smoker’s car? You can return it, but who wants to go through that hassle? It’s a lot of money,” says Carmichael.  

And he may be right: according to a 2021 Carfax Canada survey, only eight percent of Canadian buyers of new or used vehicles want to buy their next vehicle online. 

One challenge he has faced is attempted digital fraud — two attempts in recent weeks — an issue he says is rampant. “There still has to be a signature, and someone has to validate that you are who you say you are,” noting that as a lingering problem with online sales. By the end of 2021, digital fraud had been twice the problem in Canada than anywhere else in the world.

Sam Lee, Carnex.ca’s finance manager, sees things differently. 

“Purchasing a vehicle online is very straightforward,” he said. “It includes the vehicle’s imperfections and often, a good return policy. “What I see is the best model would be a hybrid system,” or more of an omnichannel approach. “In-person dealerships are time-consuming with pushy salespeople.”

EpicVin has delivered vehicle history reports for car buyers and displays used cars online, while working with hundreds of dealerships. Alex Black, its Chief Marketing Officer, says that photographs of cars have improved over time, as sellers have become more marketing savvy. 

“Nowadays, using the VR technologies, one can even create a model of a perfect car and to order it. So we can definitely say that the world of technologies introduced significant changes in the online car selling process.” On this point, the US Automotive Dealership Benchmark Study saw a direct correlation of sales to VR availability.

Zach Klempf, founder and CEO of Selly Automotive, is an automotive market contributor who has been featured in CNBC, Forbes, and other outlets. 

“For the part of the industry where there is more wear and tear on the car, it gets hard to sell that entirely online,” he explained. “But if it’s a commodity like a brand new Camry or Corolla under warranty, no major incidents, there is a market for it. Some consumers go into dealerships 

and completely change their mind on the car they want to buy once they see it and physically drive it.”

But things are looking a bit shaky for the online car industry, with volatile economic factors, noted Geoff Cudd, the CEO and founder of Find the Best Car Price. “With a diminishing supply of vehicles for sale, and the highest interest rates seen in years, the average price of a car is out of reach for the typical buyer. This is hurting all dealerships, but especially the online dealerships who overpaid to acquire vehicles from customers and they are now being forced to downsize in order to stay afloat.”  

Betakit in January confirmed as such, reporting that layoffs have been increasing in the market. 

Clutch and Canada Drives recently announced staff cuts, citing poor economic conditions. A representative from Clutch blamed a variety of factors, including “rising rates, supply chain disruptions, and volatile pricing.” 

New York Times reported that Carvana took a quarterly loss of more than a half-billion dollars, and laid off four thousand staff. In the past year, used car values have dropped 20 percent, leaving dealers to offload stock for far less than they paid, according to the Times. Cox Automotive said that 2023 sales will likely be half of the year before.

It looks like in-person shopping is here to stay, at least in the foreseeable: “There is still a general resistance by dealerships to complete the entire transaction online. Most dealers still push for an in-person meeting where they are more confident that the sales process will result in additional sales of high-margin items for the dealership,” said Cudd.

Share this:
Continue Reading

Featured