Amazon is getting into the auto business with Amazon Vehicles, but not by becoming a sales platform for the cars themselves, but by being a car information center, automotive community and promoting the sales of parts and accessories. They are seeking to become the hub for car buying enabling customers to find crucial information when shopping for vehicles, parts, and accessories.
Amazon is only showing the suggested manufacture prices of cars since they aren’t actually selling the cars themselves. The Amazon Vehicles site does however sell everything else including headlights, brake drums, and radiator hoses. They are using the platform as a marketing tool to become a major supplier of automobile parts and accessories.
Our prediction is that Amazon will next start selling used cars themselves and eventually push legal changes allowing them to sell new cars as well, perhaps starting with Tesla which isn’t currently connected to a dealer network.
“Our goal is to support customers during one of the most important, research-intensive purchases in their lives by helping them make informed decisions every step of the way,” said Adam Goetsch, Director of Automotive at Amazon.com. “Amazon Vehicles is a great resource for customers who are interested in car information or looking for a broad selection of parts and accessories – all enhanced by the ability to tap into the knowledge, opinions, and experiences of other car owners within the Amazon customer community.”
Amazon Vehicles features:
- Research Tools: Customers can now view comprehensive detail pages complete with specifications, images, videos, and customer reviews for thousands of new and classic car models. Finding cars on Amazon Vehicles is simple – just search like you would any other product or browse by year, make, model, customer rating, MPG, towing capacity, and more. Customers can begin researching vehicles today at www.amazon.com/vehicles.
- Community Engagement: Customers can browse tens of thousands of customer reviews on Amazon Vehicles, including uploaded images and videos, as well as submit their own. Customers can also ask other car owners questions about their vehicle – anything from “Can you fit two car seats comfortably?” to “How does this car perform in the snow?”
- One-Stop Shop: Amazon Vehicles is an extension of the Amazon Automotive store, which enables customers to add information about their current car to the Amazon Garage for shopping parts and accessories designed specifically for that vehicle. To-date, more than 35 million customers have saved their car(s) to the Amazon Garage.