Accelerating the Digitalization of Automobile Retailing in China: A Multi-level Perspective on Impacts of COVID-19 on the Sector

The automobile retail industry in China has been affected by COVID-19 with online sales of automobiles experiencing an increase during the pandemic. The empirical problem for auto retailers is the struggle to continue business as usual including confirming the best auto retail channel in the post-pandemic era. The theoretical problem that underpins this paper is the disconnect between extant literature suggesting consumers flocking back to offline dealerships and the empirical facts that online auto retail is constructing to experience growth. To address this problem, this paper tackles the main research question of “Can online auto retail become the ‘new normal’ in a post-pandemic era?” Through the theoretical lens of the multi-level perspective (MLP) framework of Geels. Online interviews using semi-structured questions were carried out with 15 participants, with direct content analysis being used as the analytical method to generate findings. The results indicate few signs of transitions from offline dealerships to online auto retail in the near foreseeable post pandemic future. Abundance of experiential information and transaction costs are also found to be important factors affecting automotive consumers’ choice of purchasing channels. Finally, limitations and suggestions for future studies are also stated.