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“We have a lot going on around the customer experience” || Bob Welby, Senior Director of Sales, Marketing, Product, and Customer Operations, INFINITI USA

·27 min·1 clip

I have never ever bought a car in my life, and I've been in the automotive business for 27+ years.

Dealer News Today starts its sixth season with Bob Welby from Infiniti. Derek gives him a warm welcome and keeps the tone easy. Bob has spent about 30 years in the automotive world and stayed with one company the whole time. The two settle into what Bob's role actually covers. Sales, marketing, product, and consumer operations is a lot of ground. Derek keeps asking for the plain-language version, and that suits the show well. The conversation turns to customer experience. It also lands on digital retailing. Bob talks about how more shoppers are doing their homework online before they ever come in. Derek pushes on the point that buying a car is still a big purchase. The interior feel still matters. Touching the dash still matters. Driving the car still matters. Bob agrees that the store experience is not going away for most people. The better answer is flexibility. Give customers room to do business the way they want. The talk also gets into incentives and the industry's recent reset, and it ends with a brief nod to Infiniti and the New York auto show.

As heard by us

A practical look at how online car-shopping and in-person experience both still matter.

Bob Welby lays out how car shoppers now do much of their homework online before they ever step onto the lot, while Derek keeps the exchange grounded in the basic question of what digital retailing changes and what still has to happen in person.

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Why you'd press play

You want Bob Welby's take on how digital retailing is changing the car-buying path.

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