Mercedes-Benz India launched its new ‘Retail of the Future’ sales model in October this year, and it has now announced that over 1,000 cars have been delivered under the novel direct-to-customer sales strategy, with an order bank of over 2,000 units. The luxury marque will also be hiking its prices in the new year, though it has announced price protection for specific models.

• Mercedes began selling vehicles directly to customers in late October 2021
• 1,000^th vehicle under the new strategy delivered recently in Delhi
• Protection from January 2022 price hike offered on A-class, E-class and GLA

Mercedes Benz direct-to-customer retail model

Mercedes-Benz sold its last model to an authorised dealer in India in October. Since then, the company has been selling cars directly to customers, with dealerships being in-charge of just the test drives and vehicle deliveries. In little over a month, the carmaker has managed to cross the 1,000-unit sales milestone under its new strategy, with the thousandth vehicle being an A-class Limousine recently delivered to a customer in Delhi.

This strong performance comes on the back of a good third quarter which saw the luxury marque sell 4,101 cars in our market.

Commenting on the response to its ‘Retail of the Future (ROTF)’ model, Martin Schwenk, managing director and CEO, Mercedes-Benz India, said, “Delivering the thousandth Mercedes-Benz within a short span under the ROTF platform strongly validates our vision of reimagining customer excellence. It gives us tremendous confidence about ROTF as the future of luxury retail, since our customers were highly convinced with this new retail experience, which enriched their customer journey with Mercedes-Benz.”

Under its new business model, Mercedes owns and manages the complete stock of its cars across the country. With dealers no longer required to make heavy capital investments in the inventory, it improves their business viability.

Prices, as well as offers, are now centrally controlled by the company. While customers can no longer negotiate discounts with individual dealers, it does guarantee uniform ex-showroom prices across all states. Dealers now have to compete with each other on the basis of the purchase experience provided, which Mercedes believes to be beneficial for customers.

Mercedes Benz price hike and price protection  

Following an industry-wide practice, Mercedes will be increasing its ex-showroom prices from January 1, 2022. The company has said that as a result of feature additions to its range as well as the rising input costs, “only select models” will be affected by the upwardly price revision that will range up to 2 percent.

However, Mercedes has announced price protection for customers “who have booked their cars and are waiting for MY 21 cars”. The courtesy has also been extended to buyers “who book select range of cars comprising the A-class, GLA, and E-class until December 31, 2021”. Customers who have booked the GLE 450 and GLE 400d SUVs, and have been waiting for deliveries since April this year, have been given the assurance of price protection as well.

What do you think about the concept of Mercedes selling cars directly to customers? Would you like other carmakers to follow suit? Let us know in the comments below.