Antimicrobial Treatments: to charge or not to charge

Antimicrobial Treatments: to charge or not to charge

With COVID-19 still here and affecting car buyers’ attitudes towards antimicrobial treatments, the question many dealers are asking is whether or not to charge for this treatment or make it a complimentary offering while the pandemic continues?

Good question and one that has no easy answers.

Dealers that consider offering it free with purchase have some advantages to this strategy.

  • It buys a lot of goodwill if branded in a way that shows the dealer truly cares about the health of their buyers by making sure everyone has the protection that antimicrobials offer.
  • Free antimicrobial treatment can help upsells in F&I. When buyers feel like they are getting a valuable service for free, they are likely going to be more open to listening to your pitch for other ancillaries.
  • A properly branded antimicrobial service, especially if offered for free, can set your store apart from the other dealers in the market that don’t offer such an important and timely protection.
  • Only potential downside is that the perception may be that if something is free, there must be no inherent worth to it.

But…if your store wants to charge for it to help the bottom line, there is no shame in that either.

  • If your F&I provider is offering an antimicrobial at a reasonable back-end cost, a dealer can offer it on every car as a preloaded protection for a nominal fee. This helps add to the bottom line at a time when every dealer needs it.
  • Charging for it (again, a reasonable amount), gives the customer the perception that it MUST be an important product or the dealership would not include it with every car.
  • Downside? You will have some customers who will not pay for it and assume that if your store cared about health and safety, it would be offered for free. Unfortunately, a no-win with some folks.  

Bottom line? Either has good and bad but given the importance of keeping buyers safe in their vehicle may dictate being generous and offering the antimicrobial free or at a very small cost. Take the ‘goodwill’ and run with it. 

Click here to see how Exogloss can help you easily private-label your antimicrobial and get every car in inventory protected.

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