Have you noticed that your local Subaru dealer probably doesn’t offer deep price cuts and entertaining promotions to get customers in the door. like the sellers of other automboile brands? That’s because Subaru has a problem that most businesses would love to have: people are buying their cars as quickly as they can make them. It means that dealers have to hope that customers won’t walk away and buy another brand when the model they want is out of stock.
According to the Wall Street Journal, part of the shortage issue is that while Subaru exports most of the vehicles it sells from Japan, it has a manufacturing facility in Indiana. Only one, though: other Japanese automakers have multiples.
Arguably, Subaru doesn’t even have a whole plant, since they do some assembly in their U.S. factory for Toyota. Fortunately, that agreement will end this year, boosting Subaru’s U.S. plant capacity.
This is different from most of the auto industry, where dealers use discounts, incentives, and advertising to get customers in the door and sell to them. Americans happen to be into Subaru’s specialty right now: SUVs and crossover vehicles that are fuel-efficient for their size.
Luckily for the company, most people who want one of their vehicles are willing to wait. Up to a point. Customers generally won’t wait ten weeks to get the vehicle they want, the company’s head of U.S. operations explained to the WSJ, but they will wait.
“They will wait four to six weeks [because] our customers like us [and] have a little more patience,” he said. On a corporate level, this means a higher profit margin because the brand doesn’t have to pay for sales incentives to dealerships.
Why Finding a New Subaru May Take Some Time [Wall Street Journal]
by Laura Northrup via Consumerist
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