Few players have used online as a medium for the age old idea of product selling – like futurebazaar.com, eBay.in, Indiaplaza.in, whereas few companies have restricted to service selling covering various industry; like naukri.com for jobs, magicbricks.com for property, shaadi.com for matrimonial services and now the most interesting one for me is Reliance’s Bigflix.com for Movie Rentals in India.

I have done my best to keep abreast of the B2C online trend for past few years and now see few players venturing with its services for the auto industry. Though I do believe that it’s a proven concept in the US, as few US websites claims that 25% to 30% of the sales leads for US car dealership is generated by these websites.

Many players have studied this trend in the US and believe that as usual in eCommerce the trend would follow in India too.

But what do you consumers think? How would you behave to their services? What would you use these auto website’s services for?

(a) For Information – to get information on price, EMI & Insurance Calculations, to know promotions available at any given time, models and dealership reviews?

(b) Will you further use their services to forward your “interests” on a “model” to these websites such that they can get the price quotes for the car you looking for from ALL the dealers in your location delivered to your email inbox?

(c) If these websites provide an option to buy a car online with all information to make a decision, insurance and finance options, will you be convinced to buy a car sitting at your home?

a. If so, will you just buy a NANO online?
b. Or will you also buy other cars in the small segments like Indica, Maruthi 800 etc..?
c. Or will you buy all cars?

I have these thoughts. What do you guys think?