Barry Judge, the chief executive of eBay Motors Group, shares his thoughts on the role of tech and artificial intelligence in transforming the used car buying experience.

Having been in the UK for over 12 months, after a career working overseas across different digital marketplace sectors, most recently in the Middle East, I’ve been able to reflect on the challenges and opportunities facing car dealers and the role that online platforms can play in serving them.

When I first started looking at the UK’s used car classifieds sector, I was impressed by the innovation I saw across the board. Despite online classifieds having been around for over two decades, the sector has not reached maturity; there’s plenty of potential for further growth.

I’ve seen how successful classified sites in other industries have rethought their proposition and evolved into genuine marketplaces that can both improve confidence to buy and visibility of marketing ROI by better supporting the transaction.

It’s a natural progression, serving the needs of vendors and buyers, and one that I’m certain will become stronger in the UK’s automotive sector over time.

Until then we can expect to see used car classified sites increasingly making strides to deliver the wants and needs of buyers and sellers to increase connections and leads.

Greater automation of the customer search experience will be a central theme as classifieds evolve over the coming years. Acknowledging that many customers may not know what they’re looking for when starting their car buying journey and helping them along the way with intelligent digital touchpoints will be game changing.

Artificial Intelligence could have a transformational role in making this happen and taking customer searches to the next level. It is already being used in other customer facing sectors and whilst it is undeniably an emotive topic at the moment, the genie is out of the bottle, so regulation will need to catch up.

Also, something we see more in the e-commerce space and social media is the use of video and live selling, making the buying journey more immersive. We know from our ongoing Consumer Insight Panel research how the greater use of videos, rather than static imagery, would resonate with buyers and so advance the user experience on classified sites.

There are some fantastic opportunities to embrace tech to further innovate the automotive classified experience and remove more of the friction points associated with the used car buying process.

Central to this is making it easy for in-market car buyers to choose how they interact and purchase by offering blended online and offline solutions.

And that would be welcome news for car buyers and dealers alike.

Author: Barry Judge, chief executive, eBay Motors Group