I think Ford should take what Kziniti is doing one step further. If you go to Ford's website to look at a car you want to buy (I think I might have been here just a few times) http://www.fordvehicles.com/cars/mustang/
There's tabs for, "get a price quote," "build and price your ford," "locate a dealer," "search dealer inventory," all are designed to sell a car.
Why not add "BUY Your Ford"
It doesn't take much more than adding a tab on their website to improve customer service, lower inventory, and make their product more accessible to customers. Come on Ford, I know you've been trying to do something like this with your internet coupons. Just put the damn tab on your website already.
This is how I would do it. First, you need to be sure that someone is really buying a car, and the customer needs to be sure he/she is getting a car. Take a deposit via credit card (I had to give $500 for ordering my Mustang). Have the customer enter his/her information, name, address, phone number, e-mail, etc. Next, have the customer enter his/her social security number so a credit check can be done to see if he/she would be approved for financing. Unless the customer is paying it all at once, then this can be skipped. Also, I'd only do the credit check until the deposit has been taken. This would avoid people using the site just to see if they could be approved for a car, unless they are willing to part with $500 for it. Next, mail out a letter to the address to confirm the order. Inform the dealership closest to the customer of the order. If the customer does not get approved for financing, the dealer can try to sell him/her a used car or a car of lesser value (you have someone that wants to buy a car, don't let them spend their money else where). Next have an option that says something like, would you like your order to be confirmed via US mail to the address you previously entered, or at your local dealership. As soon as the order gets verified, it gets a VIN and Serialized. The order gets built based on availability, not allocation. After all these cars are already sold. Kzinti would know best what to do from here, because he's done a wonderful job at it already! The window sticker, I love that. Its hanging up on my wall right now If possible maybe add a pic of it getting built, that would be a nice touch. I guess this should go back up towards the beginning, but as for the price to charge this way, I don't know. This is the first car I've ever bought, I'm paying $200 under sticker plus a $500 student discount (I'm an MBA student, so this should be good adivce), it'd be nice to get that keep it simple no tags too, but we'll find out next week (I hope). Anyways you want people to do this b/c it saves Ford money, but you can't just give the car away. $500 over invoice, I don't know someone else would be better at making this call than me. Anyways, Kzinti is so good he can probably inform the customer that his/her car should arrive at the dealership Tuesday at 5:00 depending on traffic :D The car gets dropped off at the closest dealership, and the dealership gets some of the profits for using a parking spot for a few hours and filling out some paper work.
Lower inventory. Benefits - saves a ton of money, customers get exactly what they want. Disadvantages - people are still going to want to buy a car the same day they go to the dealership, some cutomers will not trust the internet (there are ways around that, but it won't work for everyone).
Take a look at Dell. It's probably nice to have an expensive product sold before its built.
Improving customer satisfaction and making cares more accessible to customers: The benefits are a given, and it's pretty hard to come up with a disadvantage.