SPOKANE, Wash. -

Pat Simmons remembers what the eve of an auction sale looked like five or six years ago.

Back then, he said, you could see dealers combing the lot the night before a sale, scoping out the inventory, getting a peek at what the next day’s event would bring.

“They’d be poking their heads in cars, starting them up,” said Simmons, who is the e-commerce development manager at DAA Northwest, located in Spokane, Wash.

“And we’d have to escort the dealers out, come nighttime when the sun fell,” he said with a laugh. “And now, the night before an auction, there’s still some traffic out there, but you can definitely see a difference.

“The difference is that everybody is using the Internet, in general, but certainly these guys that are in hotels (before the next day’s sale), a lot of them are using mobile devices,” Simmons continued.

In his recent interview with Auto Remarketing, Simmmons said that many dealers don’t even bother to take their laptops when they travel to an auction, instead using their smartphone or tablet devices. And that, apparently, has translated into an uptick for mobile traffic.

At Manheim, for instance, the company saw mobile traffic to its website more than triple in the second quarter. And now, a third of its customers use a mobile device to tap into Manheim.com, according to the Manheim 2012 Q2 Update released this summer.

The report indicated that there were 4.76 million mobile visits to Manheim.com during the second quarter, up 368 percent from the 1.02 million mobile visits during the same period of 2011.

“This signifies that mobile is becoming increasingly popular in the auto remarketing industry, as dealers leverage their smartphones to conduct business at their convenience,” said Joe George, senior vice president of product development at Manheim.

Likewise, Simmons has also noticed mobile site strength for DAA Northwest. He said 12 percent of the auction’s website traffic comes via tablet or
smartphone. There had been 151,000 mobile visits this year through Aug. 6, Simmons noted, adding that the average person spends about eight minutes per visit on the site.

When customers visit his auction’s mobile site, they are primarily using it to source inventory, access condition reports, check out vehicle photos and “put together a hit list for the sale,” Simmons noted.

“It has become an in-the-field tool, certainly, for our customers,” he shared.

George has noticed similar trends for Manheim’s mobile site.

“I think they’re using it to view vehicle values on Manheim Market Report,” the Manheim executive said in a recent interview with Auto Remarketing, also noting that customers use the mobile site to access their workbook while on the go.

“They can set up their workbook on their desktop, at work or at home, and then the workbook follows them with their smart device, so they can view it while they’re at the auction," George added.

“They can put the cars they’re interested in looking at into their workbook, and then they can view them when they get to the auction, both in person and on their mobile phone,” he continued.

As for dealers using mobile to buy cars, George said the company is “just starting to see that.” Dealers can place proxy bids via mobile, he said.

“Some of the more progressive dealers are able to place proxy bids when they’re at the auction, especially when they’re going to have vehicles show up that they’re interested in two different blocks at the same time,” George noted.

But it’s not just the customers who benefit from the mobile site. George pointed out how it expands Manheim’s presence, as well.

“From our perspective, it provides 24-hour, anytime, anywhere presence for Manheim, so that we’re able to be more integrated into the dealer’s daily efforts,” he noted.

That said, the increasing prevalence of mobile devices within the wholesale market also presents challenges for the auctions.

“It puts more onus on the auctions to get the data up there quicker,” Simmons noted. “Everybody is looking for that instant gratification; and people make decisions on whether to come into your auction earlier now than ever, because they’re looking five or six days ahead at what’s on the website.

“So the idea that you’ve got to do this quicker, sharper and better; it can be a challenge sometimes to get that information up quickly and reliably,” he added.

AuctionACCESS Goes Mobile

It’s not just the auctions, themselves, that have a significant mobile presence in the wholesale market, either. In fact, AuctionACCESS — a dealer registration product from AutoTec — launched a mobile tool in August.

AuctionACCESS Mobile can alert dealers if there are any issues that would keep them from being able to go buy or sell vehicles at that auction’s sale; and it can allow them to resolve the issue, should one pop up.

So, say a dealer pulls into the parking lot at an auction before the sale. Not only can they receive notification of an issue, says AutoTec president Chuck Redden, “in a lot of cases, they can resolve the issue while they’re still in the parking lot of the auction.”

AuctionACCESS Mobile also lets a dealer monitor and adjust who is allowed to buy and sell on his or her account. Dealers can also use it to search out auctions and inventory. Additionally, the manage membership functionality of AuctionACCESS Mobile lets dealers see their updated floor plan availability from participating lenders.

Mobile Trends in Retail Market

And on the consumer-to-dealer side of the market, it appears mobile has a significant stronghold, as well.

According to data from CNW Research released in July, the proportion of new-vehicle shoppers using smartphones to gather vehicle information climbed from 2.44 percent in calendar-year 2008 to 26.78 percent in the first half of 2012.

The latter sum is also more than 10 percentage points higher than the proportion of new shoppers using mobile devices for research in full-year 2011 (16.03 percent).

For full-year 2010, that proportion was 11.41 percent, compared to 4.94 percent in 2009. So there certainly has been a rapid increase in usage over the last four-and-half years.

“Looking at individual markets and brands, Los Angeles is among the strongest for use of a smartphone for auto data searches,” said CNW president Art Spinella, sharing more details into the firm’s findings.

“In L.A. — including the entire DMA and the San Fernando Valley — Chevrolet buyers, for example, climbed from just below 9 percent in 2008 who used a smartphone for car or truck information searches to well over 41 percent in the first half of this year,” he continued.

Editor”s Note: For more on mobile device usage in the car business and related news, see the Sept. 1-14 print issue of Auto Remarketing, which is our look at "Digital Trends, Tools & Strategies for Smart Dealers."