While making cars is a dying industry in the U.S., collecting car maintenance data seems to be a quite promising business. Jiffy Lube has 2,200 North American service centers servicing about 27.5 million customers per year. Jiffy Lube does “fast lube,” i.e. quick oil changes for drive-in customers. But Jiffy Lube is also in the data business:
Jiffy Lube® also uses state-of-the-art computing technology to educate customers about vehicle maintenance services, share customers’ maintenance histories across its network, and provide services that satisfy vehicle manufacturers’ warranty requirements. This gives drivers the freedom to visit any Jiffy Lube® service center with the peace of mind that their records can travel with them. [from Jiffy Lube’s History & Mission]
“Educate customers about vehicle maintenance services” means sell services in addition to oil changes based on collected data about a car’s maintenance history. Those service are offered at a time when it’s highly convenient for the customer to buy the services. The customer’s car is right there at Jiffy Lube, ready to be served. That’s a propitious action circumstance for personalized, relevant advertising, much like that of text ads displayed in the context of web search.
The automobile industry could do much more to develop its data businesses. Cars generate a large amount of performance data that could be downloaded at maintenance stops. Establishing open standards for such data and making it easy for car owners to grant anyone access to their car’s data could enable considerable value in data services. Car service centers could sell a wider range of more accurately targeted maintenance services. Gas stations might sell personalized mixes of gas optimized for the car’s driving pattern along with reports on fuel mileage history. Certification and evaluation services in the used car market would be more valuable with much additional car usage data beyond car mileage. Storing, sharing, and processing data is cheap and continually getting cheaper. Businesses that aren’t thinking about how to create data businesses aren’t learning from Google.
Note: Trust is important for creating value from data. “Don’t be evil” makes particularly good business sense for data businesses.
Yes, but…
While ancillary services might make durn good use of all kinds of data (as in the Jiffy Lube example, above), car manufacturers may not be particularly inclined to collect, share or use data as much. Why? Because the purchase of cars is, for the most part, meant to be based on emotional decisions. And emotional decisions can be confused or contradicted by data.
Ask most people how many car models they seriously studied before buying. If they tell you more than zero, ask them for any details about the search. Ask where they did the research; what reviews they read; what cars they test drove. You will quickly piss them off. Because, odds are very good that they bought a car using a pretty basic criteria: one that I want, that I can almost afford. And the “want” will be based on friends’ experiences (which isn’t a bad form of research, per se, but just kind of shallow), what their folks bought (or didn’t), what they think is cool, what has a couple features that stood out as fun/useful, etc.
The more expensive an item is, the less we want to know about it. Because expense usually translates to complexity. And we don’t want to admit that we really aren’t qualified to understand the differences between cars, computers, major appliances, etc. Most people spend more time analyzing the price and ingredient differences on small purchases, like detergent. Because that is something where our intellect can help; Brand A does 12 loads per dollar, Brand B does 16. 16 is more than 12. Buy B.
I just re-read your post, though, and noticed that you’re not talking about data being used by drivers/owners, but by the manufacturers and other, ancillary service providers. That would probably be fine. As long as they don’t use it to confuse people who have made a major financial decision based on the number of cup holders in the back seat.
Topiary fondly remembers her last major purchase of twenty-five cup-holders gently cradled in some sort of motor vehicle, can’t quite recall which one.
Alas, it seems that just as McDonald’s true calling is purchasing real estate, not selling burgers, it seems that all commerce seeks only to get our info to sell us more….cupholders.
Moo!