Pain Point 3 - Pricing
June 10, 2025
Dealer Pain Points
Our third article in our series on dealer pain points and ways to overcome them, sees us take a closer look at pricing.
Getting the price right
Underprice and profit margins suffer, overprice and vehicles sit around in group stock for days on end. Getting prices spot on for maximum profit and fastest turnaround is essential not just on day one of retailing a vehicle but each day it remains on the forecourt.
Dealers rely on a blend of digital market tools, Auto Trader’s price rating system, local knowledge and specialist expertise to ensure accurate pricing but even so profit is continually overlooked. According to Auto Trader’s latest data insights dealers enjoyed a buoyant April but a whopping £25 million was missed due to the under-pricing of in-demand vehicles.
Andy Whitehair, Autofinity CEO: “No business can afford to wave goodbye to such vast sums of money especially when it’s easily rectifiable with the swathe of digital tools providing up-to-date and reliable information in granular detail. Dealers need to become much more agile in their response to changing market factors and reflect local nuances to ensure margins are maximised but with multiple marketing channels, it is often too much of a challenge.”
However, dealers who combine an intelligent, data-driven pricing strategy with integration technology are best placed to optimise profitability.
Autofinity’s ViHUB pools vehicle data to create one rich source of information with automated feeds to multiple online channels. Change a vehicle’s price once on the Autofinity dashboard and the price is updated everywhere making it easy to make minor adjustments to stay ahead of the market and reflect its often subtle fluctuations whilst ensuring price consistency and aiding regulator compliance.
The extensive manual effort needed to keep abreast of all online marketplaces is automated with double keying eliminated. Dealers can input their own ‘rules’ to red flag vehicles according to their own criteria, for example, not enough images or an unrealistic mileage, before they are put live to market online.
“Ambiguities, irregularities and inconsistencies are no longer spectres which suddenly emerge from the ether. ViHUB not only offers practicalities and assurances in a dynamic and fast-paced used car market, but Auto Trader Connect integration means the site’s price rating tool is visible on the dashboard enabling fast and effective pricing and subtle changes before a car is even put live to the online marketplace.”
“ViHUB creates a joined up process whereby separate data sources are pooled and a rich source of vehicle information is contained in one dashboard which populates integrated sites. The application of such aggregated pricing information together with the overlaying of the retailer’s own pricing ‘rules’, means vehicles are more likely to be placed higher in searches and therefore sold faster.”
If you want to:-
See Auto Trader pricing flags and recommendations in your own dashboard
View competitor analysis against each vehicle in stock in one place
Understand market pricing before purchasing stock to maximise margin
Improve depreciation calculations based on average time to sell predictions
Gain complete visibility of days in stock, market response ratings and to immediately identify problem vehicles and reprice
Automate pricing and generate price suggestions to speed up response to market changes to keep vehicles competitive
