No brand has embraced the strategy more completely than Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz, which has let U.S. customers pick up new whips in Germany since 1965. In the years since, about 100,000 Benz customers have taken Daimler up on the offer, at no extra charge save the travel. To Mercedes, however, the cost isn’t insignificant.
In addition to covering the trans-ocean shipment of the car, Daimler offers a discount of up to 7 percent to those picking up at the factory and waives the roughly $1,000 delivery fee customers would pay at a dealership.
The return on the program for Mercedes compares favorably to that of a TV commercial or other big-ticket marketing expenses, according to Bart Herring, the company’s general manager of U.S. sales. “If we can get them interested in European delivery, we think we have them forever,” Herring says. “There’s just something about being in Germany and having someone explain to you in a German accent how the car was made.”
In Europe, customers who pick up their vehicles are encouraged to drive them on a grand tour, ending at one of several ports where it will be shipped back to their hometown dealership. Although the cost and logistics are taken care of, including insurance for continental driving, the trans-Atlantic travel can take up to 10 weeks.That’s one of the reasons relatively few buyers opt for the factory pickup. Last year, it took Mercedes dealers in the U.S. just three months to sell the same number of cars that have been picked up in Germany in the past half century. Audi AG, meanwhile, says fewer than 1,000 buyers a year choose the factory pickup, despite the fact that buyers are met at German airports by a chauffeur-driven A8 sedan and granted a free night in a nearby hotel.
Porsche expects about 2 percent of U.S. buyers this year to get their vehicles in Germany or at one of the U.S. experience centers.
“We’ve never really advertised it,” Zellmer says. “So it’s a bit of an open secret.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.