CarMax 2008 Annual Report Download - page 8

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8| CARMAX 2008
CarMax offers customers a one-of-a-kind car-buying experience. Our
culture focuses on providing an ethical, trustworthy and transparent
customer experience, including no-haggle pricing and a vast selection of
high quality used vehicles. We inspect and recondition all vehicles that we
retail, and we guarantee their quality and accurate odometer readings.
We do not sell flood- or frame-damaged vehicles. CarMax offers a five-
day, money-back guarantee and at least a 30-day limited warranty. Rather
than incentivizing our sales associates to sell customers a car they don’t
need or can’t afford, we generally compensate them based on volume and
not on gross profit. In addition, we will buy any customer’s vehicle,
whether the customer buys from us or not.
CarMax offers a variety of financing alternatives, including CAF and
a number of other lenders, and, since sales associates don’t normally receive
commission on the financing, the entire process is driven by the needs and
preferences of our customers.
Increasingly critical to the car-buying experience is the Internet.
Our website, carmax.com, offers customers easy access to more than
25,000 vehicles nationwide and visits to the site continued to increase
significantly during fiscal 2008. Every year we enhance the site in ways our
customers have told us are important to them, including new design
improvements, such as more and better photos and a more detailed fact
FOR 15 YEARS,
WE HAVE
REVOLUTIONIZED
THE USED CAR
INDUSTRY.WE HAVE
BUILT CUSTOMER
LOYALTY THROUGH
INTEGRITY AND
HAVE SUSTAINED
IT BY OFFERING
UNBEATABLE VALUE.
CUSTOMERS
sheet for each car, as well as greater functionality. The site also facilitates vehicle transfers by customers, which now
represent more than 20% of our sales.
This year we implemented a major improvement to our site with our enhanced vehicle search capability, which
allows customers to search by a wide variety of attributes beyond the standard make and model, dramatically reduc-
ing the time it takes for our customers to find their perfect vehicle. During the year, we also added several other
elements to the site designed to increase our customers’ confidence in their choice of vehicle and the overall trans-
parency of our offer, including customer reviews and safety/reliability ratings.
An upcoming upgrade was requested by customers in the early stages of the car-buying process. It is an online
vehicle recommendation tool that will assist them in finding a vehicle that meets their individual needs and prefer-
ences. In general, one of our goals is to continually improve the website’s research capability, broadening the
information available to customers and acting as an invaluable tool for early decision makers.
Overall, our goal is to make car buying as easy and transparent on carmax.com as it is in our stores, while also
offering more in-depth information that can be accessed directly by our sales associates as they assist customers. We
plan to become a one-stop shop for buyers at every stage of the process and continue to offer customers more online
tools to streamline the car-buying process.