AutoNation 2007 Annual Report Download - page 6

Table of Contents
size of the store. Our goals are to improve employee productivity, to reward and retain high-performing employees, and to ensure
appropriate variability of our compensation expense.
• Using Information Technology: We are leveraging information technology to enhance our customer relationships and increase
productivity. We use a web-based customer relationship management tool across all of our stores. We believe this tool enables us
to promote and sell our vehicles and other products more effectively by allowing us to better understand our customer traffic
flows and better manage our showroom sales processes and customer relationships. We have developed a company-wide customer
database that contains information on our stores’ existing and potential customers. We believe our customer database enables us
to implement more effectively our vehicle sales and service marketing programs. We expect our customer database and other tools
to empower us to implement our customer relationship strategy more effectively and improve our productivity.
• Training Employees: One of our key initiatives to improve our productivity is our customized comprehensive training program
for key store employees. We believe that having well-trained personnel is an essential requirement for implementing standardized
operating practices and policies across all of our stores. Our training program educates our key store employees about their
respective job roles and responsibilities and our standardized processes in all of our areas of operation, including sales, finance
and insurance, and parts and service. Our training program also emphasizes the importance of conducting our operations,
including our finance and insurance sales operations, in accordance with applicable laws and regulations and our policies and
ethical standards. As part of our training program, we conduct specialized training for certain of our store employees in areas
such as finance and insurance, fixed operations, and sales. We also require all of our employees, from our senior management to
our technicians, to participate in our Business Ethics Program, which includes web-based interactive training programs, live
training workshops, written manuals, and videos on specific topics. We also run the AutoNation General Manager University to
prepare our future general manager prospects to become well-rounded successful leaders of our stores. We expect our
comprehensive training program to improve our productivity by ensuring that all of our employees consistently execute our
business strategy and manage our daily operations in accordance with our common processes and policies, applicable laws and
regulations, and our high standards of business ethics.
Build Powerful Local-Market Brands
In many of our key markets where we have significant presence, we are marketing our non-premium luxury stores under a local
retail brand. We continue to position these local retail brands to communicate to customers the key features that we believe differentiate our
stores in our branded markets from our competitors, such as the large inventory available for customers, our sales, service, and finance
and insurance standardized processes, and the competitive pricing we offer for widely available services. We believe that by having our
stores within each local market speak with one voice to the automobile-buying public, we can achieve marketing and advertising cost
savings and efficiencies that generally are not available to many of our local competitors. We also believe that we can create strong retail
brand awareness in our markets.
We have fifteen local brands in our key markets, including “Maroone” in South Florida; “GO” in Denver, Colorado; “AutoWay” in
Tampa, Florida; “Bankston” in Dallas, Texas; “Courtesy” in Orlando, Florida; “Desert” in Las Vegas, Nevada; “Team” in Atlanta,
Georgia; “Mike Shad” in Jacksonville, Florida; “Dobbs” in Memphis, Tennessee; “Fox” in Baltimore, Maryland; “Mullinax” in
Cleveland, Ohio; “Appleway” in Spokane, Washington; “Champion” in South Texas; “Power” in Southern California and Arizona; and
“AutoWest” in Northern California. The stores we operate under local retail brands as of December 31, 2007, accounted for
approximately 61% of our total revenue during fiscal 2007.
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Each of our stores acquires new vehicles for retail sale either directly from the applicable automotive manufacturer or distributor or
through dealer trades with other stores of the same franchise. Accordingly, we depend in large part on the automotive manufacturers and
distributors to provide us with high-quality vehicles
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