Genius: BMW’s retail culture change

Sam Peña-Taylor

BMW changed the culture of its retail outlets by reframing the relationship between customer and sales person away from a confrontation and negotiation.

BMW is a brand with incredibly strong associations, not only with drivers who consider their natural habitat the fast lane, but with quality. The German car maker is understood to exude quality, expensiveness, and, increasingly, innovation. But as the cars have developed, the showrooms remained much the same, staffed with salespeople hungry for commission.

Change here had to be cultural, Michele Fuhs, the founder of retail consultancy Circle 4X, and concurrently the head of premium retail experience at BMW, told the Omnishopper International conference (Barcelona, November 2017).

One issue that other brands may envy about BMW is the fact that...

WARC subscribers can sign in to keep reading

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands