Listing its cars on Ebay was evidently not a novel enough gimmick to drive new sales to slumping Detroit automaker General Motors.
A month and a half after announcing their “virtual showroom”, America’s biggest automaker and biggest online auction site are calling off their partnership.
The trial was set to end on September 30, and will not be renewed. The trial programme, which let California buyers haggle with local dealers online, was heralded as a “win-win for both sides” if it worked.
But after 50 or so days, it looks as if it didn’t. The Ebay site may have attracted 1.5m hits, producing 15,000 leads for dealers. But neither Ebay nor GM would say how many cars were sold, suggesting that the results were less than stellar. Ebay tried to make nice during the breakup. “The fact that this program itself may not continue as a promotion is not necessarily (indicative of our relationship with GM),” Rob Chesney, vice president of Ebay Motors told the Associated Press.
GM also sought to put a positive spin on the experience. “We’re taking what we learned from Ebay and applying it to our digital and social marketing media marketing strategies,” GM spokesman John McDonald told the AP.
What’s next? Selling GM cars on Twitter?
