Monterey, California – September 20, 2021 – Polaris ranked highest in the 2021 “Omnichannel PSI for UTVs” Industry Study, which for the first time included omnichannel website shopping measurements in addition to calculating effectiveness selling in-person. The study answered the question, “What happens when UTV customers shop for a vehicle by first visiting the brand’s website, or a dealership website, and then visiting a dealership in person?” BRP’s Can-Am brand was ranked second of the seventeen UTV brands evaluated, followed by John Deere.
The “Omnichannel” approach to shopping and purchase combines and integrates a customer’s online and in-store experience. A customer moves from a brand website, to a dealership website and start of communication with the dealership, to visiting the dealership in-person. The customer may then go back home again and back onto the websites before committing to buy either online or back at the dealership in person.
Two factors have driven recent growth in omnichannel selling: widespread use of smart phones and the appearance of online digital retail shopping tools. As an example, in 2007, the year the iPhone was introduced, online retailer Amazon’s sales totaled $15 billion. By last year, Amazon’s sales had grown to more than $300 billion, and customers today almost always begin their shopping online, even if they eventually visit a store in-person. More recently, industries that traditionally relied only on in-person sales have embraced new online digital retail tools. For UTV shoppers this has meant the appearance of “Buy Now,” or “Buy from Home” buttons on websites, along with other online digital retail tools like inventory search, payment calculator, trade-in value estimator, test-drive request and others.