Mercedes-Benz launches direct retailing business model ‘Retail of the Future’ (ROTF)

Mercedes-Benz India has introduced its highly innovative customer-centric ‘Retail of the Future’ (ROTF) business model that promises to transform the luxury retail sales of cars in India. Retail Of the Future was initially announced in June 2021 and later was launched after the successful beta testing phase. The program was announced by Martin Schwenk, MD & CEO, and Santosh Iyer, VP- Sales & Marketing, Mercedes-Benz India, from the company’s Metro Auto Hangar dealership located in South Mumbai. With this India becomes the first CKD market to get such a direct to Customer business model.

Martin Schwenk, MD & CEO, Mercedes-Benz India said, “In June 2021, we announced a disruptive retail business model which is highly customer-centric and promised a seamless, Omnichannel and transparent experience to our customers. Today, we are proud to implement the ‘Retail of the Future’ in India after successfully establishing a robust digital backbone, which will support this significant transition in our retail business. ROTF is a unique customer-centric business model, which caters to the evolving trends of our customers while empowering our franchise partners by significantly reducing their financial and operational risks in the market. ROTF further supports our quest toward creating customer excellence as the Franchise Partners will now solely compete on providing a superlative customer experience.”

Mercedes-Benz India says that with the ROTF, it will retain the ownership of the entire stock of cars with them and the car maker will retail its stock with the help of an appointed Franchise Partners, and the cars will be invoiced directly to the customers. The company further announced that it will also be responsible for processing and fulfilling customer orders. Mercedes-Benz also says that under ROTF, there will be only one nationally set price of its cars, which will be uniform throughout the country. Also, customers will now not have to pay any incidental charges anymore for their purchase, while the company will provide its customers with direct access to national stock for higher visibility on the desired products along with providing the VIN number to the customer at the order booking stage itself making things very transparent.

Customers can book the car via the Mercedes’ new ROTF platform by paying a booking amount of only ₹50,000 which is fully refundable if they decide to cancel it. After this the customers can block the car for 40 days for them and within that period the customers can opt for a test drive and take further buying decisions, finance options what so ever.