Abstract

The case study ‘CARS24 Creates a Differentiated Experience in Indian Used Car Marketplace’ describes how CARS24, a new entrant into the largely unorganized pre-owned automobile market in India, addressed the existing pain points of sellers and buyers to become a unicorn in just five years after it was founded in 2015. Cars24 started its business operations assisting individual customers in selling their pre-owned cars to used car dealers. In 2019, it forayed into the business of selling pre-owned cars to individual customers and in 2020 the company entered the pre-owned 2-wheeler business. The case study also seeks to highlight the approaches taken by the company to offer the best automobile trading experience to sellers and buyers of pre-owned cars and two-wheelers in India. The case begins with a brief snapshot of the Indian pre-owned car market and the numerous issues faced by both buyers and sellers. The case study then details the innovative Customer-to-Business (C2B) model used by CARS24 to simplify the process of selling pre-owned cars and the Customer-to-Customer (C2C) business model it implemented to simplify the process of buying pre-owned cars. Next, the case describes the customer satisfaction and process adherence measuring mechanism undertaken by CARS24 to ensure a uniform customer experience across all its branches with the help of the Learning and Organizational Development (L&OD) and the Business Intelligence (BI) department. The case also focuses on the customer experience improvement program implemented by Cars24 to improve the quality of interaction between the company and the customer. The case touches upon the future plans of the company based on its strong foundation in technology that has made the customer experience efficient and reliable and helped differentiate the company from the competition.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Learn how startups can achieve high growth by addressing unmet customer pain points.
• Understand the importance of service quality dimensions and the service gap.
• Learn how a focus on ‘customer experience’ can help platform businesses differentiate themselves from the competition.
• Learn about technology in service innovation and customer relationship management.
• Become aware of the benefits of standardization of service behaviors and actions.

Keywords

Services Marketing; Customer Experience; Customer Gap Model; Customer Satisfaction; Customer Relationship Management; Business Models; Customer-to-Business Business Model; Customer-to-Customer Business Model; Managing Service Quality; Brand Differentiation.