ATLANTA -

With today’s “savvy” and research-minded car-shopper, offering transparency has become increasingly important for dealerships, and bearing this in mind, a pair of AutoTrader.com executives aim to show dealers how they can connect to these shoppers through such transparency.

At the upcoming NADA Convention & Exposition in Las Vegas, AutoTrader’s Tori Morandi and Rick Wainschel are leading a workshop called “Connect with Transparency” that will explore how dealers can establish connections with shoppers through a more transparent business model.

“The key to successfully appealing to car shoppers lies in understanding what influences their behavior, so it is important for dealers to be informed of how external factors over the last few years have dramatically altered the consumer mindset,” said Morandi, the company’s manager of industry education.

“There’s no question that shoppers are spending more time conducting online research and scrutinizing every aspect of a pending vehicle purchase. This has changed how cars are sold, and today’s most successful dealers have adopted a more transparent business model to attract and engage with these savvy shoppers,” she continued.

To begin the workshop, the pair will delve into what’s considered the industry’s “new normal,” while also looking at how the economy has altered the car-shopping process for consumers.

Wainschel — who is AutoTrader’s vice president of automotive insights — and Morandi will move into a discussion showing how crucial transparency is to reaching consumers, given this new paradigm. They will also offer attending dealers three strategies for pulling in more customers.

"At AutoTrader.com, we dedicate considerable time and resources to researching and analyzing how consumers shop for vehicles online, and we’re excited to share those insights with the dealer community and give them some actionable strategies that will enable them to capitalize on consumers’ increased need for transparency during the shopping and sales processes," Wainschel emphasized.

The workshop is being offered three times:
— 2 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. on Friday
—3:45 p.m. to 5 pm. on Friday
—10:30 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. on Saturday

Editor’s note: Stay tuned to Auto Remarketing’s special NADA Daily e-newletters for complete coverage of the conference.