Most middle-class Latin American car owners only go to a dealership for maintenance during the warranty period. Dealerships seem to have strong resources to support their entry into the competition, but in fact, their target customers are not the same as Autolab. Through design thinking and quantitative research, Zepeda and the Polymath team found that the biggest problem of the traditional auto repair model in Latin America is the mistrust and loss of efficiency caused by the information asymmetry between service providers and consumers.Īs the company moves forward, its leaders identified the opportunity around the specific target audience they are trying to impact. On the other hand, many of the independent shop owners in Latin America are also repair workers, who lack the awareness of marketing and innovation to boost their businesses to achieve incremental growth. Latin America is well-positioned to evolve this industry, due to the high concentration of owned cars. At the same time, users reluctant to buy new cars are shifting their buying behavior towards boosting the life and trade-in value of their vehicles. The recovery of the auto market is directly connected to the reopening of cities and revamp of global economies according to Statista, the global automobile sales average is 70 million units per year. The industry’s acceleration is mainly driven by two factors the healthy recovery of the auto market and the growing base of independent auto repair shops. Latin American countries are developing countries with rapidly growing car ownership, so the auto repair market has great potential. In addition, these independent shops are known for their lack of transparency and low trust. In order to attract more customers, they must offer lower prices and a wider variety of services, resulting in lower quality of parts and repairs. For the average independent repair store, the competition among them is highly homogeneous. Traditional dealership shops located at the top have little competition, and despite being able to offer original parts and high-quality service, they have rather high premiums.

Autolab polymath trial