黑色星期五，网上购车者增加

    数百万吃饱了火鸡、满心欢笑的美国人将会在这个大周末来到商场，为自己和亲朋好友购买UGG雪地靴、Xbox游戏机和冰雪娃娃。

    另一个行业也逐渐开始利用黑色星期五和网络星期一的商机，而通常情况下，这里看不到热闹的人群和跳水的价格，这个行业就是汽车业。

    感恩节前后，大量购车者会光顾汽车店。Kelly Blue Book的分析师亚历克斯•古铁雷斯表示，尽管黑色星期五的汽车销量目前尚未达到美国阵亡将士纪念日和劳动节的水平，但对汽车经销商而言，它已迅速成为一年中最重要的周末之一。

    然而，古铁雷斯称，汽车打折并非都是短期活动，许多汽车厂商的“打折活动会从黑色星期五一直持续到12月底。”

    那么，是什么推动了汽车销量在黑色星期五实现增长？毫无疑问，部分原因只是更多人将这个周末当作购买一切商品的好时机，而汽车业只是搭了个顺风车。不过古铁雷斯也表示，在2009年至2010年的金融危机过后，汽车业的表现跌至历史最低，如今已经开始恢复生气。

    而另一个促使汽车销量在黑色星期五和网络星期一攀升的因素，是网购在购车过程中的重要性日益增加。Dealer.com是Dealertrack旗下一家为汽车经销商提供购买工具的网站。该网站在2013年黑色星期五前两周的访问量同比提高了7%。

    Dealertrack的数码战略副总裁戴夫•温斯洛表示：“我们发现，这段时间的网站访问量大幅增加，去年也有这个情况。”温斯洛指出，随着顾客们开始网购，他们是否在这个周末光临了汽车店并不重要，因为他们在买车之前已经做出了大部分决策。

    一家汽车网购公司在吸引黑色星期五的顾客上更进一步，公司对所有车辆都提供1,000美元的折扣。这家初创公司名为Carvana，它自称是“汽车业的亚马逊（Amazon）”。Carvana只卖二手车，所有的购买手续，包括付款在内，都在网上进行，汽车将于次日送至客户处，其中没有试驾过程。（不过公司提供送达七日内无条件全额退款。）目前，Carvana只为亚特兰大、纳什维尔和夏洛特三座城市提供服务。

    Carvana的首席执行官欧尼•加西亚强调，他们没有在黑色星期五之前两周提价，然后再在活动期间降回原价。加西亚表示，许多竞争对手都会玩弄这种伎俩，但他们公司非常重视这次促销。

    他说：“外面每家汽车经销商都会在黑色星期五打出一些疯狂的活动，因为他们只是玩玩。让顾客听到我们的声音真的十分困难。”

    黑色星期五真的是买车的好时机吗？提供汽车价格追踪服务的Truecar的执行副总裁拉里•多米尼克表示，这也许是个不错的时机，但顾客可以有更好的选择。

    他表示，尽管黑色星期五的折扣不错，但月底实际上会有更加优厚的让利活动。因为汽车制造商和经销商都希望在年底之前尽可能多地把车卖出去——如此一来，汽车厂家就能报出更多的年销量，而经销商也更容易达成厂家设定的销售目标。（财富中文网）

    译者：严匡正

    With bellies full of turkey and hearts full of mirth, millions of Americans will head to the mall this extended weekend — to buy Ugg Boots, Xboxes and Frozen dolls for themselves and for loved ones.

    Increasingly, another industry is cashing in on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and it’s not one you usually associate with teeming crowds and slashed prices — autos.

    Car shoppers are visiting car dealers in greater numbers around the Thanksgiving holiday. Alex Gutierrez, an analyst at Kelly Blue Book, said that while Black Friday hasn’t yet reached the level of Memorial Day or Labor Day for car sales, it’s quickly becoming one of the bigger weekends of the year for dealers.

    Granted, the deals offered on car lots aren’t always short-term, he noted. Many manufacturers are “running their Black Friday specials throughout the month of December,” he said.

    So what is driving this increase in Black Friday car shopping? Some of it, surely, is just the growing focus on the weekend as a time for all things consumerist, with cars dragged along for the ride. Gutierrez also notes that for the past year or so, the auto industry has been recovering from a historic low point that came during 2009 and 2010 in the aftermath of the credit crisis.

    The other thing driving auto sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday is the increasing importance of online shopping to the car buying process. Dealer.com, a Dealertrack TRAK 2.02% company that sells shopping tools to auto dealers, saw a 7% increase in the total traffic during the two weeks leading up to Black Friday in 2013 compared to 2012.

    “We are seeing a major surge in traffic, and we saw it last year too,” said Dave Winslow, Dealertrack’s vice president of digital strategy. Winslow pointed out that, with customers going online to shop, it doesn’t really matter if they are actually heading to the lots this weekend, because most of the decision-making happens before they actually go to buy a car.

    One online auto company is taking things a step further in its appeals to Black Friday shoppers by offering a flat discount of $1,000 on all cars. That would be Carvana, a startup that calls itself the “Amazon of cars,” in that the cars — all used — are sold entirely online, including financing, and delivered the next day with no test drive. (The company does offer a no questions asked, full refund return within seven days of delivery.) Carvana currently operates in Atlanta, Nashville and Charlotte.

    Carvana CEO Ernie Garcia stressed that Carvana wasn’t raising prices for two weeks before Black Friday and then cutting prices back down to what they were originally. With so many of their competitors taking that tack, Garcia said the company was stressing the promotion too much.

    “Every automotive retailer out there is going to have some crazy Black Friday thing,” he said. “That’s because they’re playing games. That’s really hard for us to really get through to customers.”

    Is Black Friday really a great time to buy a car? Larry Dominique, an executive vice president at Truecar TRUE -2.00% , a service that tracks car prices, said that while it may be a good time, but shoppers can do even better.

    He said that while discounts are very good on Black Friday, they actually improve at the end of the month. This is because car makers and dealers are looking to move as many vehicles off the lot as possible before the end of the year — manufacturers so they can report the best yearly sales they can, and dealers to reach the sales goals set by the manufacturers.