vAuto Introduces Key Market Metrics In Stockwave To Address Rising Used-Vehicle Demand, Weakening Supply

OAKBROOK TERRACE, Ill., June 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- vAuto is helping more dealerships take advantage of today's changing automotive retail landscape — characterized by a marked shift in consumer demand away from new and toward used vehicles — by expanding its proprietary suite of market data to all Stockwave users with the introduction of vAuto's Live Market View and Autotrader's Scarcity Index.

Stockwave is a vAuto solution that helps dealers effectively and efficiently find and purchase vehicles from top wholesale sources all through a single platform. Through this expansion, Stockwave users — both independent and franchise — will gain access to valuable market data from vAuto and Autotrader to help them make more confident and informed used-vehicle purchase decisions.  

While rising affordability concerns are causing new-vehicle sales volume to taper, the used-vehicle market continues to hold strong. In fact, dealerships may need to be more concerned about supply than demand. To date, wholesale market growth and supply has largely been driven by off-lease vehicles. However, Cox Automotive calculations suggest off-lease volume will peak in 2019, indicating supply moving forward could become a major headwind for the used-vehicle market rather than demand itself.

Both independent and franchise dealers are starting to take notice, with approximately 33 percent of all dealers saying limited inventory is holding back their dealership, according to the Cox Automotive Dealer Sentiment Index for the second quarter of 2019. That's an increase of 4 percentage points from last quarter.

"With the number of off-lease units at a peak and fewer consumers as a whole trading in their vehicles, the data and insights dealers have at their fingertips are more important than ever to ensure they are buying and selling the right inventory at the right time for the right price," said Patrick Janes, business development director for Stockwave at vAuto. "As supply changes, so must dealer inventory strategies. By introducing Stockwave Market Data, both independent and franchise dealers will be better equipped with information to acquire the inventory they need and capitalize on rising demand."

Previously only available to Stockwave dealers with vAuto Provision, all standalone Stockwave dealerships will now also have open access to the following four key metrics right in the platform:

1. Autotrader Scarcity Index: Gives dealers an understanding of online search demand for a car relative to the number available in a given market area.
2. vAuto rBook Market Days Supply: Lets dealers know at a glance whether a vehicle is likely to sell fast, given competing cars in the market and recent sales.  
3. vAuto rBook Adjusted Market Average Price: Uses proprietary technology to indicate what a vehicle's real market average pricing is with inventory mileage from competitors factored in.
4. vAuto rBook Market Average Odometer: Specifies the average mileage of retail vehicles in a dealer's given market.

"Having the Scarcity Index and Market Days Supply inside Stockwave will help my team save hours of scanning through search results to find the right cars," said Craig White, pre-owned director at Ourisman Lexus of Rockville. "What we used to track through static spreadsheets is now all in one dashboard and available at a quick glance, enabling my team to make split-second decisions on vehicles that weren't even on our original buy list. We are now nimbler, able to monitor multiple auctions at once and effectively growing our used-vehicle volume to meet rising demand."

For more information on Stockwave, visit www.vauto.com/stockwavedata.

About vAuto
vAuto® provides innovative technology, tools and business intelligence to thousands of dealerships across the United States and Canada, helping them compete more effectively and increase new/used vehicle sales volumes and profits. Founded in 2005, vAuto revolutionized dealers' used vehicle operations with the groundbreaking Provision® suite of tools. Leveraging The Velocity Method of Management®, pioneered by vAuto founder, Dale Pollak, Provision helped dealers adopt a more transparent- and turn-focused approach to used vehicle acquisition, appraising, pricing and merchandising based on real-time, local market supply-and-demand data. In 2018, vAuto released the Provision ProfitTime metric and methodology to help dealers maximize inventory turn and gross profit based on the investment value or profit potential of each vehicle. The same year, the company incorporated Cox Automotive's HomeNet unit into its organization and launched iRecon, an online reconditioning workflow platform. The moves extend vAuto's efficiency-focused used vehicle management solutions into vehicle merchandising and reconditioning.

vAuto's solutions also include Conquest, a new vehicle inventory management and pricing system, and Stockwave, which enables dealers to efficiently find and purchase vehicles from leading wholesale sources via a single platform.

Headquartered near Chicago, Illinois, vAuto is a Cox Automotive™ brand.

About Cox Automotive
Cox Automotive Inc. makes buying, selling, owning and using cars easier for everyone. The global company's 34,000-plus team members and family of brands, including Autotrader®, Clutch Technologies, Dealer.com®, Dealertrack®, Kelley Blue Book®, Manheim®, NextGear Capital®, VinSolutions®, vAuto® and Xtime®, are passionate about helping millions of car shoppers, 40,000 auto dealer clients across five continents and many others throughout the automotive industry thrive for generations to come. Cox Automotive is a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises Inc., a privately-owned, Atlanta-based company with revenues exceeding $20 billion. www.coxautoinc.com

SOURCE vAuto