Ever since 1992 when Volvo Group established its first office in Beijing, the Swedish vehicle brand has achieved tremendous success in mainland China by spreading its ventures across landscape of automobile, truck, coach, yacht, machinery and finance. In 2010, Volvo Car Corporation became a wholly owned subsidiary of Geely Holding Group of China after a 1.8 billion dollar acquisition. According to a recent release from Volvo official website, its monthly car sales in China grew 12.8% in November, 2016, making China once again its most fast-growing market in global.
However, to keep ahead in Chinese auto market has never been an effortless job for any world famous motor manufacturer. For emerging Chinese middle class, buying experience and after-sales service are becoming increasingly important in their purchasing behaviors. Hundreds of luxurious 4S stores with advanced facilities and custom furniture were constructed for meeting this unstoppable trend. Volvo was at the leading position of this trend at its very beginning, and it certainly wants to maintain the edge. That is why when digital signage became the new trend for automobile 4S stores, Volvo was one of the earliest enthusiasts to embrace this fantastic tool.
“It didn’t surprise us when they told us that they want LCD kiosks in their 4S stores. Most automobile 4S stores in China are planning to use, if haven’t already used, digital signage to improve their brand image, certainly Volvo didn’t want to be left behind.”
— John Jiang, Products Manager of Betvis Digital Signage.
What needed to be done
Considering the different locations and scales of its 106 4S stores, Volvo knew it very well from the very beginning that a centralized management was necessary with certain level of local dealer autonomy for flexibility. The system should be able to cover its upcoming 100 more 4S stores in the future, and can’t be outdated in 5 years. To sum it up, the digital signage system was designed to meet these requirements:
Be able to manage 1500 to 2,000 online screens via a single server run by Volvo marketing team.
Allow local dealers to add their own information and events.
Support multiple areas displaying on one screen at one time, including multiple video clips and scrolling texts.
Support displaying website and RSS feeds for automatic updating.
Easy to create interactive programs for customer inquiry and check.
To meet all these demands, Betvis applied DSM80 digital signage management software to ensure the system performance and flexibility.
Solution from Betvis
Elegant kiosk appearance
It goes without saying that appearance is normally the first thing that can attract audience’s attention. An elegant design with a sense of technology is a perfect presentation of Volvo’s brand value and taste. Inspired by some of Volvo’s most magnificent appearance designs on vehicles, Betvis came up with a floor-standing kiosk with streamline body and classic black and silver color assortment. Thanks to its high grade taste, it can blend in perfectly in Volvo 4S store entrance, reception desk, showroom, lounge, service area, new car delivery area, basically everywhere.
Spectacular display effects
Instead of ordinary screens which can only show one single image in loop, Volvo’s kiosk has three display areas delicately divided on its portrait screen.
The top area takes 38% of the whole screen, and is dedicated to show car profiles like appearance, performance and basic configurations. The middle part of the screen takes about 30 percent, and mainly plays video clips of new car promotions or Volvo brand events. The bottom area shows texts in most time, including Volvo slogan, new model car features and real time RSS news.
As the original screen layout, this three-floor design turned out to be brilliant and succeeded in getting plenty of positive feedback. Volvo marketing team had the plan to change the layout on a quarterly basis to remain the feeling of freshness.
Convenient screen-touch inquiry
Aside from the eye-catching dynamic images, a well-designed screen-touch inquiry system turned out to be another highlight. This inquiry system is infused into the screen display layout, so no extra interface is required. Customers can touch the car model they like to view more relevant information right across their fingertips. For example, if a customer touch at a particular car model shown on the top area of the kiosk, the area will be triggered to show related information like engine performance, torque system or interior decoration in tree structure pages. Customers can even make their own automobile design by choosing and combining all the elements together.
All these interaction footprints are detected and saved in the form of spreadsheet and graphics for further customer preference analysis and other big data applications.
Various interactive applications
Interactions with customers are not limited within vehicle inquiry, some brilliant interactive application campaigns are also integrated into the touchscreen to bring more entertainment elements to the site. Clients can play a video game on the kiosk to earn store credits for prize exchange or maintenance discount. Useful information like motor maintenance tips and auto insurance promotions are inserted into these games and applications in a clever way, which can effect customer decisions in a less perceivable way.
The application interface is triggered by preset timing schedule, as a way to add a sense of wonder into the 4S store ambiance. Visitors can compete with each other in a game or a quick quiz to have some fun while at the same time receiving profitable knowledge. It is an all-win situation for every participant and the 4S dealer as well.
Special displays for service area
Screens installed in the service area are slightly different from those kiosks. For starters, it comes in landscape display, which is embedded into shelves for parts and accessories, while the main difference is on the digital content deliberation. For those clients who are looking for maintenance or replacement of parts, service area definitely is an excellent point of sale for new products and service packages. For those whose cars are old enough for a replacement, this is also a perfect place to convince them that now is the time to move to something better. All these information are delicately scheduled both in timing and length to get the best impression from its audience. Since services differ on a store to store basis, each 4S store dealer has their own autonomy to modify the content to their benefits.
Comprehensive centralized management
A centralized management mechanism build over cloud server is what behind everything visible. All terminals can be remote set on/off time, speaker volume, screen brightness, playing mode and everything. Screens are divided into groups according to their precise locations. All the campaigns and applications are downloaded to screens per preset schedules or temporary demands. Each single content or program can be scheduled in play time and play mode, providing the maximum flexibility.
Contents can be updated from both Volvo marketing team and local dealers, according to importance and permission level. Each administrator can create users for its interior use by assigning different roles to different users. This pyramid-like management structure guarantees the system to operate with highest efficiency and proper flexibility.
Any possible extension on this digital signage system in the future can be easily integrated into the current structure. For the upcoming trend is that latest technology will be applied into automobile 4S stores. Therefore the system is open to embrace new module like video monitoring system, augmented reality application, between-screen communication and so on.
www.betvis.com
