Order a sweater from Land's End and get the color, size and style delivered to your doorstep in a couple of days.
Pull into a Wendy's drive-through and drive out with a burger dressed only with the toppings you want.Search for a new car in a specific color with certain equipment and prepare to be disappointed.
You want sea mist green but have to settle for forest green. Or you want an in-dash compact disc player, but only a trunk-mounted CD stacker is available.
According to one survey of new-car buyers, 35 percent who buy off the lot give up something they want just to get into a new car more quickly. They aren't as happy as they could be. And they don't become loyal to a dealer or a brand.
The study, conducted for the auto industry in 1994 by Allison-Fisher, revealed that more than one in five switched dealers before closing a sale. More than one in 10 switched brands.
After years of pushing cars on dealers who in turn pushed them on customers, automakers are changing the game. They are getting closer to having the right car on the lot at the right time. It's not easy because cars are harder to move than sweaters and more complex to make than hamburgers.
No matter. The have-it-your-way mentality is invading the auto industry.
Automakers are waking up to the importance of getting the right cars to dealers faster.
- After two years of testing, Cadillac rolled out Custom XPress Delivery to all its 1,500 dealers on Feb. 3. The Custom XPress promise to a customer: A popularly equipped model in the desired color in 24 hours. A special order in three weeks or less - half the time it used to take.
Custom XPress has changed nearly everything for Cadillac dealers. They keep fewer cars in stock, in some cases less than half as many as before. But they carry a greater variety of models and options.
The reasoning goes that a customer who wants a red Eldorado can often be sold on the features of a blue one. But if the blue car won't do, the dealer makes a phone call, and the red car arrives overnight from one of 10 U.S. regional distribution centers or a hub in Warren, Ohio.
A key to making Custom XPress work is having the right cars coming off the production line in the first place. Cadillac is building most models in what it calls popular configurations, colors and content determined by what has sold and what Cadillac expects customers to order.
Dealers are losing some autonomy - "we don't have as many colors in combinations to show customers," says one Detroit-area dealer - but costs are lower, too.
"There is a certain comfort level to looking out and seeing a whole sea full of cars," says Brian Small, director of Custom Xpress Delivery. "When dealers see a little blacktop, they get a little nervous."
- Cadillac thinks it is helping dealers by controlling more of the inventory. Dealers spend less because they finance less inventory. And their maintenance costs are lower because fewer cars mean less damage on the lot and less time in the repair shop.
Custom Xpress is expected to lead to a dramatic reduction in trading cars among dealers. Historically, Small says, one in four Cadillac sales results from a dealer swap.
Now, if the customer who wants that red Eldorado wants optional equipment that Cadillac considers special, Cadillac will build the car in the Detroit-Hamtramck factory and deliver it within three weeks.
"Through the test, we've been hitting in excess of 95 percent reliable delivery dates," Small says. "When we tell the dealer it will be there in seven days, it is."
Reliable timing is particularly important to customers who might be returning a leased car or trying to collect a rebate due to expire.
Ed Nimnicht, a Cadillac dealer in Jacksonville, Fla., has been involved with Custom XPress Delivery since the beginning. He used to keep 148 Cadillacs in stock. Now he keeps 60.
He says he wouldn't go back to the old way of doing business.
"Instead of having a grassy area out back filled up with cars, we just have a grassy area," he says.