Luxury car dealership differentiators

[gonat]

Would those of you working within a luxury car dealership advise the main top two or three differentiators when it comes to the parts department operations, utilizing parts catalogue etc... Or is there not a major difference? e.g. do you deal more with the end customer than the other type of dealerships?

Thanks in advance for your response..
go

[mkwalsh]

Define luxury car dealership..

Do you mean Mercedes, BMW, etc...

or are you refering to a new facility with um..lets say...a loading dock for the delivery trucks to pull up to, maybe air conditioning in the parts room, computers and catalogs that are always functioning, or maybe a break room and an employee lounge??

HA

[gonat]

I do mean a delaership that sells Mercedes, BMW, Jaguar etc... Assuming the clientele might be different than some others, does that impact the parts and service department differently? Do they buy more accessories maybe? Do they use the on line ordering and scheduling more?

[tjsmith]

We're a Cadillac dealer, and our parts dept tends to sell alot of key chains, tags, etc..but I also see a trend when it gets time for 30k & such, the wealthy here, tend to trade them in for a new one. Then you get somebody who buys a their used Cadillac, & don't want to spend any money, b/c it is all going to their car payment.

[pkwalsh]

We have Volvo, Jeep, and VW..I notice more service work (30k's etc.) at the Volvo store, those customers seem more inclined to keep up with the scheduled maintenance. We have recently started up Reynolds and Reynolds consumer reach, so I don't have any feed-back on that yet.

[CroweChizek]

I have seen higher gross profit margins, higher parts to labor ratios and higher sales per employee at high end dealerships. When looking at most benchmarks they are different. Also there seems to an even greater focus on CSI.