I was reading an interesting article on-line today about Apple's sales in 2011. It noted that Mac sales are rising fast and that 2011 was the best year ever for Mac sales. "Somewhat interesting, I guess", you say. But hear is the interesting part: In 2011 alone Apple sold more iOS devices then it has sold Macs over their 28 year existence. Granted Macs have not been the most popular computer over the years but the fact that iOS devices outsold 28 years of the Mac in a single year is pretty remarkable. It is just further evidence that mobile is not the next big thing, it has become the current big thing and only is continuing to grow.
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Topics:
Mobile
We found an interesting study this morning published by Google which describes consumer automotive shopping behavior in 2011. Some highlights below here as well as a link to Google direct for the full presentation.
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Topics:
Auto Portals,
Fuel Economy,
Automotive Data,
Vehicle,
Marketing,
Safety,
Vehicle Equipment,
Dealers
NADA 2012 this year was in one of my favorite cities out of the four city rotation - Las Vegas, Nevada. Las Vegas is an exciting city to visit under any circumstances and this excitement and energy definitely carries over into the expo. While talking with an old friend in the lobby - we were both surprized as music suddenly blared over the PA system and to my further surprize a flash mob organized in the middle of several hundred folks in the lobby into a line dance. Only in Las Vegas.
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Topics:
Automotive Data,
Vehicle,
Marketing,
Dealers,
NADA Conference,
Conferences
US and Canadian VINS are required to contain a certain level of information about the vehicle, including year, make, model, body style, engine, restraint system, and GVWR. However, a lot of important vehicle details are encoded in the VIN by some OEMs, and not by others. Working with VIN data can be tricky business when they're used in different ways by the 40+ US passenger vehicle makes. This article explains a few key concepts related to VIN decoding and something called style matching, that are critical to working with VIN data successfully.
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Topics:
VIN
Oftentimes we don't look for the spare tire in our vehicles until we are on the side of the road with a flat tire. Once in that situation you may be checking frantically for it. You check the trunk or rear cargo area, under the rear of the vehicle but it is nowhere to be found. It may be that you are one of many consumers that have purchased a vehicle without a spare tire. AAA has noticed the growing trend of vehicles without spare tires and reports the trend is likely to continue in a recent article online
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Topics:
Safety
In recent years, there have been fewer and fewer vehicles offered with a manual transmission. Automotive News recently stated in an article that only 5-7% of new vehicles sold in the US have a manual transmission. This has resulted in more VIN decodes being transmission specific, which is a nice benefit to those of us doing VIN decoding. However, the manual transmission will be missed by both me personally and by dealers everywhere.
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If you're using an automotive data provider for VIN decoding, you probably have a few vehicles in inventory that your data provider cannot decode. Some of these might be classic cars, vehicles sold in Europe or Asia then imported into the US, Trailers, or other types of vehicles that your data provider simply does not support. However, it's likely that some of these vehicles cannot be decoded because the VIN number is just plain incorrect, usually due to human error when reading the VIN off the vehicle. Fortunately, there are a number of ways to determine a VIN is invalid. You can employ these methods to isolate your invalid VINs and either make automated corrections or go back to the field to get the correct VIN off your vehicle.
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Topics:
VIN
If you were alive in the late 1980s or early 1990s and heard mention of the spaghetti sauce brand "Prego," you almost certainly will think of their catchphrase "It's in there!" No matter what desired ingredient was asked about in Prego's TV ads, the response was, of course, "It's in there!"
We often have potential customers approach us hoping to determine a specific detail or attribute of the vehicle using only the vehicle identification number (VIN). Decoding a VIN can return a large amount of useful information. However, there are still many vehicle details that can't be determined from a basic decode of the VIN pattern alone. In other words, they are not all in there.
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Topics:
VIN
If you have read any of our other articles on VIN decoding you know already that the VIN pattern has certain information that it is required to contain in the US and Canada. However, if you acquire and review a VIN file, like VIN Basic, you will come across exceptions to even these basic rules. Here are a couple of VIN rule exceptions that have led to questions from our customers in the past.
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Topics:
Support,
Automotive Data,
VIN
As technology, solutions and inventory processes continue to evolve, automotive marketing companies face some interesting challenges when it comes to vehicle marketing. With so many classified sites representing dealer inventory locally, regionally and nationally – it can be difficult to “rise above the rest”. This is also (maybe especially) a challenge with Franchised automotive dealer websites which represent an auto dealers inventory direct.
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Topics:
Auto Portals,
Automotive Data,
Marketing,
Auto Manufacturers,
Automotive
