ATLANTA - Manheim is harnessing the power of AI to create a personalized shopping and buying experience for dealers in its Marketplace. Manheim’s Big Data approach looks at its buyers’ historic activity, recognizes their individual preferences and then recommends relevant inventory to them. With these vehicle recommendations, dealers shopping the Manheim Marketplace can make faster and smarter purchase decisions.
“With the wide usage of sites like Amazon and Netflix, people are used to seeing personalized recommendations and even expect it,” said Dr. Ben Flusberg, associate vice president of Decision Support, at Cox Automotive. “We’re bringing this capability to the wholesale market to help dealers quickly and easily find the right inventory and make faster decisions, which are core to Manheim’s mission.”
Using a variety of supervised and unsupervised machine learning techniques, Cox Automotive’s Data Solutions group built an AI-driven vehicle recommendation engine that learns on its own and improves over time. The technology evaluates a specific dealer’s historical buying and bidding patterns across a wide set of vehicle and market attributes and then scores available Manheim inventory against the dealer’s profile. When generating recommendations, Manheim’s algorithm accounts for dealer preferences across vehicle age, make, model, mileage, condition, seller segment and more, along with a variety of geographic and market factors.
Manheim has been piloting this new solution throughout 2018, so far emailing personalized vehicle recommendations to more than 15,000 dealers. Clients who viewed Manheim’s recommendations have been three times more likely to buy the recommended vehicles and have increased their buying activity by more than 10 percent, proving that Manheim’s recommendations help dealers quickly find the inventory they want.
“This is a great example of how we’re bringing together the best of our technology and data resources to give dealers a real, usable solution that will make it easier for them to buy the right vehicles,” said Ed Berkowitz, vice president of Product Management at Cox Automotive. “With the success of the pilot, we’re excited to make this modern experience available to dealers directly within the Manheim Marketplace.”
Starting in early 2019, dealers will be able to see their personalized recommendations by logging on to Manheim.com.
About Manheim (www.manheim.com)
Manheim® is North America's leading provider of end-to-end wholesale solutions that help dealer and commercial clients increase profits in their used vehicle operations. Through its physical, mobile and digital sales network, Manheim offers services for inventory management, buying and selling, floor planning, logistics, assurance and reconditioning. With its omni-channel approach, Manheim Marketplace enables wholesale vehicle clients more efficient ways to connect and transact business how and when they want. Approximately 18,000 team members help Manheim offer 8 million used vehicles annually, facilitating transactions representing nearly $58 billion in value. Headquartered in Atlanta, Manheim North America is a Cox Automotive™ brand. For more information, visit http://press.manheim.com.
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