It sounds like an automotive dream: vehicle manufacturers such as Volkswagen, Mercedes and BMW will control their sales from their headquarters in the future, will need fewer dealers, customers will primarily buy online – and the corporations will save billions in sales. Tesla showed the way.
The local auto industry doesn’t dare to approach direct sales as extreme as Elon Musk (53) and Co. However, the ironclad system of “manufacturer builds, dealer sells” is definitely something that we want to break down. The method of choice: the so-called agency model. Dealers are demoted to intermediaries and they also receive significantly lower remuneration. Conversely, the manufacturer in the system has to sell more at his own risk.
More or less the entire automotive industry has been toying with the agency model for several years. Above all, Mercedes and sales director Britta Seeger (55), she drives the agency forward most consistently and is happy with it. Elsewhere, however, there is chaos
: At Stellantis, sales collapsed in the first agency markets, and the Opel parent company then stopped further expansion for the time being. At Volkswagen there are also signs of bad initial experiences even a complete about-face
.
How did this come about and what happens next with agency sales? In this podcast, Christoph Seyerlein, editor of manager magazin, provides information about this in conversation with editor-in-chief Isabell Hülsen.
In the podcast “Das Thema”, editor-in-chief Isabell Hülsen provides information every week about the editorial team’s exclusive findings on a topic that is crucial for the German economy. You can listen to the podcast via manager-magazin.de and on Spotify
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