As part of the recently released report on the work done by the sub-committee on transfer pricing (TP) of the United Nations (UN), it is noted that India has revised its country chapter on TP. Several new stands have been taken by the Indian Revenue as part of the revised country chapter, some of which are really welcome and praiseworthy. An attempt is made to discuss the stands taken by the Indian Revenue on some of the key TP issues.
It appears that for the first time, the Indian Revenue is keen to address the issue on marketing intangibles under the economic fundamentals of TP, by moving away from the arbitrary manner of inflicting routine adjustments, which has been the norm in the last six or seven rounds of TP assessments.
The Indian Revenue acknowledges the fact that post judicial decisions rendered by some High Courts on the relevant issue, the Indian Tax Administration is looking towards carrying out a detailed functional, asset and risk (FAR) analysis to ascertain whether or not the foreign licensor of the brand is assuming a risk in; or benefitting from, the Indian market through the functions around advertisement, marketing and sales promotion (AMP) carried out by the Indian licensee. In case the answer is in the affirmative, then the Indian licensee may require compensation under an appropriate TP method, otherwise not.
The Indian Revenue thereafter refers to the OECD/ G-20 BEPS report (being the revised Chapter VI of the OECD TP guidelines, relating to intangibles) to state that compensation for AMP functions need not be separate; and can be part of the price of another transaction. Further, where the licensee of the brand performs the AMP functions with the intention to exploit the results itself, obviously in the capacity of the economic owner of the marketing intangibles, then no separate compensation is required to be paid in favour of the licensee taxpayer, as understandably, the licensee taxpayer would have enjoyed; or be enjoying, the fruits from the market itself.
Thus, the Indian Revenue appears to have finally accepted and acknowledged the concept of economic ownership of marketing intangibles, by the licensee of trademark, something, which it had been refraining from doing for past several years, which incidentally had been the fulcrum of most of the disputes on the relevant issue, particularly for entrepreneurial licensed manufacturers and buy-sell companies; and also for normal risk taking marketing distributors. Such acknowledgement on the part of the Indian Revenue, even though quite late in the day, but thankfully not late enough to make the scenario irretrievable, is indeed laudable.
In case the Indian Revenue sticks to such correct fundamental approach towards TP, then the entire litigation around the issue of marketing intangibles, which is currently pending before the Supreme Court, more on legal grounds, namely the presence of international transaction or otherwise, with respect to AMP expenditure incurred by licensees of brands, under the fact pattern of TP adjustments made till date, would actually be put at rest on positive terms.
The Indian Revenue would actually do a great service to the nation and also sentiments of MNCs, who have been unnecessarily locked in horns in litigation, to submit before the Supreme Court of the subsequent self realisation and understanding of such correct approach, based upon evolution of the principles around marketing intangibles, both through judicial decisions and guidelines of BEPS; and request the Supreme Court to lay down proper principles in this regard, instead of deciding the pending appeals with reference to legal issues engulfing the incorrect manner of TP adjustments made till date.
In case the Indian Revenue were to actually practice its preaching, as contained in the revised country chapter supplemented to the UN TP guidelines, which one is tempted to strongly believe, given the present-day positive mindset of the Indian Revenue, as is manifested though several recent actions around administering of income tax laws, then the principle that clearly emerges from the revised country chapter, is that economic ownership of marketing intangibles is an "intangible asset" in the hands of a licensee of trademark, which would be a pertinent factor to determine its FAR profile; and also the impact on other relevant international transactions with its overseas related parties, particularly the licensor of the trademark, instead of the Indian Revenue trying to identify a separate transaction with respect to the performance of AMP functions resulting in economic ownership of such intangible asset; and assigning a value with respect to such separate but non-existent transaction, which unfortunately had led to all, if not most of, the litigation around the topic of marketing intangibles thus far.
The relevance of such economic ownership of marketing intangibles for various classes of licensees would understandably be different. For instance, for entrepreneurial licensed manufacturers and buy-sell companies, the moot question would be whether the Indian licensee had over-rewarded the foreign licensor through payment of exorbitant royalties or loading excessive profits on the import of products. Payments of royalties can be properly tested under the comparable uncontrolled price (CUP) method with reference to third party license agreements; or in absence of such comparable and/ or for necessary corroboration thereof, through the adoption of residual profit split method (PSM). In this connection, the observations of the Indian Revenue in the revised country chapter, that applying PSM to verify royalties is not a feasible option due to lack of requisite data, is not at all acceptable, as applicability of residual PSM to determine and verify royalties is a tried and tested approach. Neither the Indian Revenue nor the taxpayers can be exonerated from carrying out such exercise on the pretext of non-availability of data, being a ground for resorting to sub-optimal TP methods, which might actually ignite or infuse unnecessarily litigation, which could have been otherwise avoidable.
The same principle applies to import of products from foreign related parties, by such entrepreneurial licensees. If the pricing policy for import of such products is cost plus at the supplier's end, which is also in line with the entrepreneurial FAR profile of the Indian licensee, then necessary data justifying the pricing policy would need to be adduced by the taxpayer and also verified by the Revenue. This would automatically resolve all issues relating to TP in the hands of the Indian entrepreneurial licensee, including that of marketing intangibles.
The relevance for such economic ownership of marketing intangibles in the case of a normal risk taking marketing distributor has been explained by the Indian Revenue in the revised country chapter itself, by taking cue from judicial decisions and also the BEPS report. In summary, if such distributor receives adequate remuneration, commensurate to its FAR profile, particularly the AMP functions, through the pricing of products, namely in the form of distribution margin, then there should not be any further or separate TP adjustment with respect to the AMP functions. Of course, though not expressly stated in the revised chapter, for such distributors, selection of comparable companies, having more or less similar intensity of functions, being the percentage of operating expenses to turnover, where operating expenses engulf AMP functions or expenses as well, would be a key consideration for the determination of adequate remuneration of the taxpayer distributor. Selection of sub optimal comparable companies, having significantly lower intensity of functions as compared to the taxpayer, would only aggravate problems.
Thus, in the end, one must admire the evolving understanding and realisation of the Indian Revenue on the issue of marketing intangibles; and if the Indian Revenue actually adopts such principles in real life TP assessments; and also places the same as its correct, albeit revised stand before the Supreme Court, unnecessary and protracted litigation may be avoided going forward; and also the Supreme Court may be well and truly assisted by the Indian Revenue to lay down the principles of marketing intangibles, by brushing aside the frivolous types of TP adjustments made in the past, which the Indian Revenue itself does not appear to be supporting anymore, as per the revised country chapter submitted by the Indian Revenue to the UN TP guidelines.
It is heartening to note that the Indian Revenue has come out of its earlier stand, as reflected in the earlier version of the country chapter, to now acknowledge that location specific advantages (LSAs) and location savings, which the Indian economy might provide to overseas MNCs, who have set up businesses in India, would stand duly subsumed or factored in, the results of proper local comparables selected for determining the arm's length price (ALP) of transactions entered into by the Indian subsidiary companies with their overseas related parties, where typically the Indian subsidiary companies would be acting as service providers of their overseas related parties. The Indian Revenue has clarified that if such proper comparables can be identified, then no further upward adjustment on account of premium profits, if any, emanating out of LSA or location savings, being referred to as location rent in TP parlance, would need to be made to the results of the Indian taxpayers.
It may further be noted that in perfect competition, location savings and/ or LSAs may not actually result in premium profits or location rent, residing within the coffers of the principal company, situated in a developed country, which has outsourced the work to a service provider in a developing economy, as the savings in cost are generally passed on to customers in order to maintain its competitiveness or market share. Only in monopolistic situations, particularly for "first movers", can location rent actually arise; and that too for a short period of time, namely until competition also resorts to outsourcing, when market forces would automatically bring down the end-prices to the customers.
In case the foreign principal company has unique intangibles in the form of superior technology and/ or brand, for which it earns premium profits out of exploitation thereof, then that by itself would not tantamount to location rent, even if the foreign principal were to have outsourced key functions of manufacturing, R&D, software development, etc., to group companies based in low-cost developing economies.
As further elucidation, location savings or cost benefits; and LSAs, e.g. highly skilled and specialised work force, access to large and vibrant local markets, efficient distribution and information network, regulatory policy incentives, etc., are not unique intangibles, which any specific taxpayer may possess ahead of other similarly placed players in the market, such that a proper comparability analysis would not have addressed the rewards capable of emanating out of unique intangibles. On the other hand, location savings and LSAs are general benefits or advantages, which the local economy provide might provide to all business houses, who operate in the local market; and thus the benefits emanating therefrom would be captured or factored in the results of proper local comparable companies chosen for determining the ALP of transactions entered into by the local taxpayers with their overseas related parties, ideally for providing various types of services, including manufacturing, to such overseas companies.
The issue of whether or not to make upward adjustments on account of location rent, might arise where comparable companies of more developed economies are selected to determine ALPs with respect to taxpayers residing in developing economies, which generally provide benefits of location savings and LSAs, given the growth curve of such buoyant low cost economies, as opposed to the relative stagnation or low growth rate faced by developed economies, where the profit margins of companies in general, with reference to higher cost bases, would be relatively low, as compared to developing economies, as were the situations in China and Mexico, when taxpayers, in absence of robust databases for local comparables, used to select comparable companies based in Japan and US respectively, to determine ALPs for contract manufacturing and other services, performed for their overseas headquarters, which were found to be at fault by Chinese and Mexican taxation authorities on the ground of not having captured location rents arising out of location savings and LSAs provided by the developing economies of China and Mexico respectively.
However, given that both taxpayers and the Indian Revenue, have all along been selecting comparable from local databases, the coverage of each of which has only increased and improved by every passing year, the issue of location rent arising out of location savings and LSAs ideally should not arise in TP assessments in India, if proper local comparables can be identified. As mentioned above, it is a most welcome move on the part of the Indian Revenue to acknowledge and admit the above aspect in the revised country chapter.
Let us deal with the issue relating to R&D services carried out by several Indian subsidiary companies for their overseas foreign related parties, for development of intangibles under a contract service provider model.
The observations of the Indian Revenue on the relevant issue in the revised country chapter, remain the same as in the earlier version. The Indian Revenue had issued a circular in March, 2013 on the proper TP approach to be taken with respect to contract R&D services, which was in line with the guidelines of the OECD, both pre and post the BEPS recommendations, namely that if the facts suggest that the foreign related party, being the principal company, takes key decisions and performs functions around – (a) conceptualisation of the research, namely on what subject or aspect should the researcher carry out the activities of R&D, (b) on-going monitoring of the R&D activities carried out by the researcher, (c) provide funds and control the budget around R&D activities of the researcher, etc.; and the researcher was found to be only executing or implementing the instructions of the principal, then the structure could be accepted as that of a contract R&D service provider model, where the researcher would be entitled to a risk-insulated cost plus model of remuneration, with the risks and associated rewards of success or failure of the R&D being on the account of the foreign principal company, not merely by virtue of the contractual terms of the arrangement, but also in substance, namely arising out of the conduct of the two parties.
Incidentally, the OECD/ G-20, as part of the BEPS recommendations, have also categorically stated that it is quite acceptable for a company to outsource the execution functions of R&D to a related party researcher, even while properly putting in place and claiming, a contract service provider structure, resulting in a cost plus remuneration model for the researcher, provided that the principal does not outsource the strategic functions, as above, and retains the same at its level.
While it appears that the Indian Revenue is otherwise fine with accepting the concept of contract R&D service provider structure with a cost plus remuneration model for the researcher based in India, the Indian Revenue has observed in the revised country chapter, being on similar lines as its observations in the original chapter submitted in 2013, that its experience in handling the TP assessments of some of the companies in India, has been that notwithstanding the formal structures of contract R&D service provider model being put in place in such cases, the facts allegedly revealed that the Indian researchers were carrying out all the strategic functions; and therefore, were entitled to rewards commensurate to assumption of risks around the development and exploitation of intangibles, as associated with such performance of enhanced strategic functions. The Indian Revenue further stated that such researchers should not therefore be entitled to a routine and low cost plus remuneration model.
It is noted that the Indian Revenue has made the above observations with reference to practical experiences of witnessing supposed mismatches between form and substance with respect to the structures around contract R&D services, in TP assessments.
Now, there have not been much news in public on TP assessments being made in the cases of contract R&D service providers in the last four years, where the Indian Revenue has disregarded such contract R&D structures; and proceeded to adopt profit split method (PSM) to assign rewards to Indian researchers on the alleged ground of conceptualizing and monitoring the R&D functions; and accordingly economically owning trade intangibles emanating therefrom.
Further, one has not also witnessed litigation before the Tribunal in this regard in the last three or four years. After a few initial high-pitched TP assessments made by the Indian Revenue on some contract R&D structures around 2009 and 2010, by resorting to PSM, which invited significant concerns of global MNCs, thus necessitating restoration of confidence of global MNCs on the part of the Indian Revenue through the issuance of the circular in March, 2013, one is not aware of many cases where the Indian Revenue has, in the last three or four years, resorted to PSM by disregarding structures of contract R&D services.
If the Indian Revenue, more out of convenience, seeks to adopt very high mark-ups on costs, albeit under cost plus models, as substitute to PSM, even after purportedly disregarding the structure of contract R&D services, then, one is afraid that the approach of the Revenue cannot be appreciated. Incidentally, the exorbitantly high safe harbour numbers set for contract R&D services, namely around 29 or 30%, have resulted in practically zero takers thereof.
The Indian Revenue has observed in the revised country chapter, as above, that the tainted researchers should not be entitled to a routine and low cost plus remuneration model. Now, "low" is a relative term. The question is whether, having regard to a proper functional, asset and risk (FAR) analysis, a structure can be validly accepted to be one of contract R&D services ? If the answer is in the affirmative, then the remuneration model would ideally need to be cost plus, where the "plus" or "mark up" would need to be arrived at by adhering to necessary factors of comparability analysis, with nether the taxpayer nor Revenue having any right to preconceived mind with respect to the end result, namely "low" or "high" respectively. The benchmarking exercise carried out in a proper manner, by accepting comparable companies with similar FAR profile as the taxpayer, namely companies, which do not carry unique intangibles, would automatically unfold into an appropriate arm's length mark-up, which should not carry the stigma of either "low" or "high".
The nature of services rendered by a contract service provider, cannot or should not determine the percentage of "mark-up". On the other hand, selection of comparables with commensurate FAR profile would, in the normal course, lead to the determination of appropriate arm's length mark-up. It is expected that the Indian Revenue would take the correct stands around contract R&D services, both in TP assessments and also while negotiating advance pricing agreements, without any pre-conceived mind with respect to the result.
OECD/ G-20 BEPS guidelines had introduced the concept of low value adding services in the context of IGS, providing for a simplified mechanism of compliance and audit, relating to IGS, which are relatively low in the overall value chain of global MNCs. While the Indian Government has mentioned in the revised country chapter of its intentions to otherwise accept the various BEPS recommendations around TP, it has indicated strong reservations with respect to the liberised approach provided by such guidelines with respect to low value adding IGS, stating that the Indian Revenue would not adopt any such liberised approach around compliance and audit for such low value adding services.
The reason behind such stand, as explained in the revised country chapter, is that the Indian Revenue considers payment for IGS as a high risk area in TP, which according to it, often result in erosion of the tax base of the country; or in other words, the Indian Revenue feels that foreign MNCs often adopt mechanisms of IGS for undue extraction of profits from their Indian subsidiaries.
Even without considering the liberised compliance and audit model prescribed by the BEPS guidelines for low value adding IGS, which is in the form of an option granted to taxpayers, the BEPS guidelines do provide for certain minimum standards to be followed by taxpayers for obtaining deductibility for IGS, namely demonstration of rendering, and accordingly receipt, of services; and also the fact that the payer would have benefitted from such services; and would have been otherwise willing to pay for such services.
The BEPS guidelines had also mentioned that shareholder services would not generally be considered as IGS, requiring a cross charge. Of course, what would constitute shareholder services, would depend upon thorough examination of facts of each case.
Thus, to the extent the Indian Revenue requires taxpayers to conform to such minimum standards, one cannot be critical of the Indian Revenue. However, in certain cases, the Indian Revenue appears to have crossed the threshold of ultra-strictness, so as to hover around the realms of negativity.
For instance, the Indian Revenue has provided in the revised country chapter that one of the relevant questions to be asked for deciding whether IGS require arm's length remuneration, is whether an independent third party would be willing and able to provide such services ?
It is submitted that in many cases, several service offerings within an MNC group are proprietary in nature, having regard to the unique systems and synergies prevalent within the MNC group, which would be key to the proper functioning of the various group companies, yet may not be readily available to be provided by third party independent companies, if one seeks comparability with absolute precision.
In such situation, the recipient of such services is very much willing to avail of the services; and also immensely benefitted by the services, however, in reality may not find the same "off the shelf" at the disposal of third party independent companies. Now, that by itself, cannot certainly make the relevant IGS not valuable, so as not to deserve an arm's length remuneration.
The Indian Revenue has also mentioned that it generally seeks to cap the payment of IGS to certain percentage of sales or revenue of the Indian subsidiary companies. It is submitted that IGS, being ideally charged with reference to costs incurred by the central service provider of the MNC group, typically refers to routine, albeit valuable services, which are functions of costs of the service provider; and not linked to revenue of the payer companies, which one generally associates with license of intangibles and/ or provision of certain high end strategic services, which become value drivers of the business of the licensee or service recipient.
Thus, applying a cap on payment of IGS with reference to certain percentage of turnover of the Indian taxpayers, being service recipients, do not appear to be a reasonable approach on the part of the Indian Revenue; and the same is likely to cause genuine hardship to companies at the startup phase, where they would be more in requirement of support in the form of IGS from the MNC group, though it may not have been able to build up sizeable amount of revenue by that time.
It is suggested that the Indian Revenue may revisit its stand on the above two aspects while dealing with payments for IGS.


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PREP ROUNDUP, MONDAY, JAN. 21: Eastern York boys rally for basketball win over York Tech
The Eastern York boys' basketball team trailed for most of the game before rallying for a 66-64 nonleague win over York Tech on Monday night.
PREP ROUNDUP, MONDAY, JAN. 21: Eastern York boys rally for basketball win over York Tech The Eastern York boys' basketball team trailed for most of the game before rallying for a 66-64 nonleague win over York Tech on Monday night. Check out this story on yorkdispatch.com: https://www.yorkdispatch.com/story/sports/high-school/2019/01/21/prep-roundup-monday-jan-21-eastern-york-boys-rally-past-york-tech/2636536002/
RYAN VANDERSLOOT, 717-505-5403/@yaiaascores Published 11:27 p.m. ET Jan. 21, 2019 | Updated 10:06 p.m. ET Jan. 22, 2019
PHOTOS: York Tech at Eastern York boys' basketaball
Demonte Martin of Eastern York goes up and over York Tech defender Johan Suero for two point, Monday, January 21, 2019. John A. Pavoncello photo The York Dispatch
Bryce Henise of Eastern York is heavily covered by York Tech defenders after a rebound, Monday, January 21, 2019. John A. Pavoncello photo The York Dispatch
Eastern York's Trevor Seitz, right, sets up a slam dunk by teammate Demonte Martin as the Golden Knights host York Tech, Monday, January 21, 2019. John A. Pavoncello photo The York Dispatch
York Tech vs Eastern York boys' basketball, Monday, January 21, 2019. John A. Pavoncello photo The York Dispatch
The Eastern York boys' basketball team rallied for a 66-64 win vs. York Tech Monday.
Demonte Martin lead Eastern York with 21 points.
York Tech's Terence Romey scored 25 points to lead all scorers.
WRIGHTSVILLE — It was not your normal basketball game on Monday night when the Eastern York boys played host to York Tech.
Maybe it was because neither team had school on Monday due to the Martin Luther King holiday.
Regardless of the reason, the result was sometimes ugly, with both teams turning the ball over at an alarming rate.
Despite that, the visiting Spartans were able to hold the advantage throughout much of the first 30 minutes of action. The Knights, however, were able to forge a tie with two minutes left.
Attempting to hold the ball for one final shot, the Spartans instead committed a costly turnover when Dustin Cunningham stole a pass before getting fouled on a layup attempt at the other end of the court. Cunningham made both of his two attempts to put the Knights on top by a basket.
Tech had one last chance to pull off the upset when standout Terence Romey put up a 3-pointer at the buzzer, but Romey's shot hit the rim and bounced out as the horn sounded, giving Eastern a thrilling 66-64 nonleague triumph.
"The kids really fought hard tonight," Eastern coach Justin Seitz said. "We didn't take the lead until there was like (40) seconds left. We just kept believing and finally got a win. This will definitely help us later down the road."
Spartans had lead for most of game: For much of the night, it seemed as if the Spartans (10-6) were going to surprise the Knights (14-3) on their home court for a second year in a row. Tech won the Wrightsville Holiday Tournament back in December of 2017, although EY won this season's game vs. Tech at the same event, 55-44, back on Dec. 29.
Romey, who came into the evening fourth in the Y-A League in scoring at 21.2 points per game, finished with a game-high 25 points. At times, Romey was able to hit some big shots, including one midway through the fourth quarter in which he was fouled on a made 3-pointer.
That shot was just one of several that had coach Seitz scratching his head.
"We just couldn't seem to get over the hump," Seitz said. "There were multiple times in the third quarter when we'd get it down to one or two, but we'd miss a shot or turn it over and they'd go down the court and push it back to four or five."
Trevor Seitz plagued by foul trouble: Some of that was the result of foul trouble that plagued Eastern guard Trevor Seitz. Seitz was held to eight points — half of his 16.8 average. He found himself on the bench for stretches of time to avoid fouling out.
"They had a good game plan with their zone," coach Seitz said. "And we had to make adjustments. I feel like they know us and we know them and it's always a tough game."
DeMonte Martin and Cunningham were able to knock down big shots and free throws down the stretch to help keep the Knights in the game. Martin finished with 21 points to lead the Knights while Cunningham hit two 3-pointers in addition to those two final free throws.
"Cunningham was been a key factor for us," coach Seitz said. "He comes off the bench and sometimes starts for us and we really rely on him to give us some good energy. We had both Trevor and (Kade) Wiley get into foul trouble and (Cunningham) knocked down some 3s that really kind of opened up some things for us in the middle."
Excelling at crunch time: Martin was happy to see his team put it all together at crunch time, which is an area that he said was a weakness earlier in the season.
"We've been learning how to finish quarters," he said. "We struggled to finish quarters earlier in the season and that cost us a couple of games, but we finished the fourth quarter tonight and came out on top."
Big games looming: While Monday's contest was a match-up of a pair of squads that are both hoping to make it into the Y-A League playoffs next month, the test for both sides could prove helpful come later this week.
Tech has big Y-A Division III showdowns with Biglerville on Tuesday and Littlestown on Friday. Biglerville and Tech are tied for second in the division at 7-3 behind first-place and unbeaten Littlestown.
Eastern has a rematch with Gettysburg Tuesday before a showdown with D-II co-leader West York Friday. The Warriors are the only team in the division to hand the Knights a loss, while the Bulldogs will be looking for payback after EY claimed a thrilling last-minute triumph earlier this month.
"One of our goals was to be division champs," Martin said. "So this week is big for us. We have to get through Gettysburg and then West York and then Dover again (next week) and that's what we have to do."
OTHER BOYS'
West York 92, Donegal 45: At Mount Joy, the Bulldogs erupted for 76 points in the first three quarters en route to the nonleague triumph. Ty Nalls (17), Jared Shearer (13), Alex McClellan (11), Gabe Mummert (10) and Andrew LaManna (10) each hit double digits for West York, which improved to 14-2 overall. Donegal fell to 0-17.
Carlisle Christian 73, Red Lion Christian 37: Brennan Warner had 23 points in a losing cause for RLC.
Spring Grove 61, Ephrata 26: Haley Wagman (13), Addyson Wagman (12), Ellie Glass (10) and Lexi Hoffman (10) scored in double digits to lead the Rockets (12-3) to the nonleague win. Ephrata fell to 5-12.
Red Lion 40, Cedar CrestEphrata 36: Red Lion knocked off one of the better 6-A teams in District 3, led by an 11-point effort from Julia Beiler. The Lions led 24-17 at halftime and held on. Red Lion improved to 7-9. Cedar Crest fell to 13-4.
Christian School of York 37, York Country Day 34, OT: At York, the Crusaders used a 6-3 overtime edge to earn the win. Emma Bell poured in 18 points to lead CSY, which improved to 7-8. YCD fell to 2-8.
Red Lion Christian 46, Carlisle Christian 24: Bailey Sanders had 17 points and 15 rebounds, Hailee Thompson added 10 points and Jasmine Warner chipped in 11 steals to lead RLC.
Dallastown 6, Shamrocks 5: Brock Stitley broke a 5-5 tie with a late third-period goal to give Dallastown the Central Penn Interscholastic Hockey League Viola Division win. Stitley also had two assists. Trae Schanberger (two goals, three assists), Camden Schanberger (two goals), Timmy Helmer (goal), Cooper Webber (assist), Duncan Webber (assist) and Brady Frey (22 saves) also excelled for Dallastown, which improved to 4-11. Shamrocks fell to 5-7.
Reach Ryan Vandersloot at sports@yorkdispatch.com.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Q: Rudin: Real and Complex Analysis [Lusin's Theorem] I checked the questions pertaining to Lusin's theorem on this site, but it didn't have the answer I was looking for. But as I am carefully going through Rudin Chapter 2, it's been a challenge for me. For any of you that has the book on hand, I would like to pose this question to you. I'm a bit confused on two parts in the theorem, but everything throughout the proof seems fine to me.
On page 55 of Rudin, in the first paragraph of the proof section, he says to attach a sequence $\{s_n\}$ to $f$, as in the proof of Theorem $1.17$, and put $t_1 = s_1$ and $t_n = s_n - s_{n-1}$ for $n \geq 2$. He then concludes that $2^nt_n$ is the characteristic function of a set $T_n \subset A$.
My question is that when he says attach $\{s_n\}$ to $f$ as in 1.17, does he mean $s_n = \phi_n \circ f$ as stated in 1.17? As I was trying to work out how $2^nt_n$ is the characteristic function of a set $T_n \subset A$, I was unable to. By $T_n$ does he mean the set of points that belong to the range of $t_n$? As far as I know from 1.17, $s_n$ is just the step function that approximates $f(x) = x$, but as I tried different examples of $t_n$, I don't really know how Rudin gets $2^nt_n$ as the char. function of $T_n$. If anyone can clarify this, I would appreciate this.
One more thing. In the third paragraph of the proof section, he says "Since $2^{-n}h_n(x) = t_n(x)$ except in $V_n - K_n$", how did he come to conclude this?
Thanks again.

A: Yes, he means $s_n = \varphi_n \circ f$. The value $s_n(x)$ is (by construction) obtained by rounding $f(x)$ down to the nearest multiple of $2^{-n}$ (and truncating values greater than $n$ down to $n$, but this is not of interest here, since he assumes $0 \le f < 1$). For each point $x$, the values $s_{n-1}(x)$ and $s_n(x)$ will therefore either be equal or differ by $2^{-n}$. In other words, the function $t_n$ takes only the values $0$ and $2^{-n}$, so the function $2^n t_n$ takes only the values $0$ and $1$. The points where $t_n(x)=1$ make up the set $T_n$ (by definition).
As for $h_n(x)$, it is (by construction) equal to $1$ for $x$ in $K_n$ and equal to $0$ for $x$ outside of $V_n$, and the same holds for $2^n t_n(x)$ since $K_n \subset T_n \subset V_n$. Therefore the only points where $h_n(x)$ might differ from $2^n t_n(x)$ lie in $V_n$ but not in $K_n$.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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De Christian and Missionary Alliance (CAMA) is een internationale zendingsbeweging. Deze is eind negentiende eeuw ontstaan in de Verenigde Staten van Amerika uit twee parakerkelijke organisaties en telde in 2004 internationaal - volgens haar eigen cijfers – bijna vier miljoen leden. De beweging is sterk zendingsgericht en hecht groot belang aan een Bijbelse levenswandel. Hoewel tongentaal en gebedsgenezing geaccepteerd zijn bij de CAMA, wordt dit niet van alle leden verwacht. Om deze reden wil de CAMA zich niet rekenen tot de Pinksterbeweging. CAMA telde in 2008 zo'n vijf miljoen betrokken mensen. Het werkterrein van zending is vooral in de gebieden Canada, de Verenigde Staten, Volksrepubliek China, Hongkong, Republiek China en Australië. In deze gebieden zijn zeer veel kerken van CAMA te vinden.

Geschiedenis
De Christian And Missionary Alliance ontstond in 1887 door de samenvoeging van de Christian Alliance en de Evangelical Missionary Alliance. De organisatie stond onder leiding van de New Yorkse presbyteriaanse predikant Albert Benjamin Simpson. Beide organisaties waren interkerkelijk. Doel van de Christian Alliance was het bevorderen van 'dieper christelijk leven', terwijl de Evangelical Missionary Alliance vooral mensen wilde  werven en opleiden voor zendingswerk overzee. De betrokkenheid van Simpson bij de opkomst van de Pinksterbeweging leidde tot een crisis binnen de CAMA. Het gevolg hiervan was dat de CAMA zich distantieerde van de meer radicale uitingen van de Pinksterkerken, zoals tongentaal. Tevens organiseerde het bestuur de CAMA meer om zo meer grip op de eigendommen te hebben, want CAMA was verantwoordelijk voor het onderhoud van honderden werkers op het zendingsveld. Pas in 1965 werd de CAMA in de Verenigde Staten officieel een kerkgenootschap.

Nederlands-Indië
Een van de vele gebieden waar de CAMA actief werd was Nederlands-Indië. Hier werkte vanaf 1929 Robert Jaffray. Hoewel toegelaten om onder de Chinezen op Bali te werken, koos hij als vestigingsplaats van zijn Bijbelschool voor Makassar op Celebes. Nadat de CAMA het werken op Bali verboden werd, ging zij vooral in Oost-Kalimantan en op Lombok werken, twee gebieden waar nog geen andere zendingsorganisaties actief waren. Doordat de CAMA zich met name richtte op de Chinese gemeenschap was haar werkterrein over een groot deel van de Indonesische Archipel verspreid.

Nederland
De Nederlandse afdeling van de CAMA is ontstaan vanuit het werk in Nederlands-Indië. In 1937 was de predikant Willem Könemann samen met zijn vrouw vanuit Nederland uitgezonden naar Lombok. Gedurende de Tweede Wereldoorlog werd de familie Könemann geïnterneerd door de Japanse bezetter. Na de oorlog gingen zij voor herstel op verlof naar de Verenigde Staten en België. In 1948 keerden zij terug naar Nederlands-Indië waar de Könemanns gingen werken op de Bijbelschool in Makassar. In 1950 moesten zij terugkeren naar Nederland, omdat Ds. Konemanns gezondheid door de Japanse bezetting blijvend was aangetast. Op verzoek van de CAMA gingen de Könemanns in Nederland zendingskandidaten werven. In het begin werden voornamelijk onderwijzers en onderwijzeressen uitgezonden naar Nieuw-Guinea. Deze zendingsorganisatie CAMA Nederland heeft haar hoofdkantoor in Driebergen.

Naast de interkerkelijke zendingsorganisatie CAMA Nederland ontstond uit zendingswerk in Nederland zelf een aantal gemeenten, die zich in 1980 verenigden als "De Alliantie van Evangelische Gemeenten 'Parousia'". De eerste van deze gemeenten is de Evangelische Gemeente Parousia Den Bosch, gesticht in 1975. Op 12 oktober 2006 zijn de Parousia-gemeenten gefuseerd met de Broederschap van Baptistengemeenten tot Alliantie van Baptisten- en CAMA-gemeenten, ook wel ABC-gemeenten. Deze kleine kerk - ca. 5000 leden verspreid over 55 gemeenten in 2006 - staat organisatorisch los van de zendingsorganisatie, die zich als interkerkelijk profileert.

Eind 20e eeuw zijn er twee Chineestalige CAMA gemeenten opgericht in Amsterdam: Chinese CAMA Gemeente Amsterdam en Chinese Mandarin CAMA Gemeente Nederland. De ene gemeente gebruikt Standaardkantonees en de andere Standaardmandarijn als voertaal. Verder zijn er ook Chineestalige CAMA gemeenten te vinden in Almere en Den Haag.

Hongkong
In de 20e eeuw is de zendelingenorganisatie zeer actief geweest. Er werden kerken, basisscholen, middelbare scholen, één hogeschool, maatschappelijke organisaties, één theologische school en één natuurkamp voor vakanties opgericht.

Literatuur
 E.G. Hoekstra en M.H. Ipenburg, Wegwijs in religieus en levensbeschouwelijk Nederland, Kampen: Kok, 1995.
 H.D.J. Boissevain, "The Christian and Missionary Alliance", in: H.D.J. Boissevain (red.), De zending in oost en west. Verleden en heden II, Hoenderloo: Zendingsstudieraad, 1945, pp. 232-251.
 M.C.D. Wittenberg, Christian & Missionary Alliance. Overzicht van een beweging (Ekklesia, 2011) 88pp.

Zendingsorganisatie

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


The U.S. Army Corps of Engineer's increased releases from Garrison Dam to 60,000 cubic feet per second. This flow approximately correlates to a river stage of about 13 feet on the Missouri River in Bismarck/Mandan.
Map Disclaimer: The North Dakota State Water Commission does not guarantee freedom from errors or inaccuracies and disclaims any legal responsibility or liability for interpretations made from the map, or decisions based thereon.
The U.S. Geological Survey WaterAlert service sends e-mail or text messages when certain parameters measured by a USGS data-collection station exceed user-definable thresholds. The development and maintenance of the WaterAlert system is supported by USGS and its data-collection partners, including numerous federal, state, and local agencies.
News and press releases related to 2018 flooding in North Dakota.


Displaying new car inventory on your dealer website?
Sorry for the lack of postings and comments over the last week. I was in NYC for a few days attending the Mercedes-Benz Internet Marketing Dealer Advisory Committee.
It is an honor and interesting committee to be apart of. It's made up of about 10 dealers, most of which are GM's and/or owners with only a few actual Internet / BDC managers. We also have several people from Mercedes-Benz corporate; Justin Colon and Inigo Mazquiaran (head of Internet Marketing for Mercedes-Benz USA), several regional marketing managers, a few guys from the IT department along with Bill Hunt and Mabel Estrella from Critical Mass.
The topics of conversation gets interesting, especially when you have such a mix of younger and older thinking in the same room. It's common to hear the old school voice their opinions about many of the subjects like; dealer search on the MBUSA website, new vehicle display on your dealer websites and SEO/SEM guidelines, just to name a few.
The best part of this committee meeting is that it gives me plenty of topics to blog about.
One topic of heated conversation was the displaying of new car inventory on your website. Many of the dealers on the committee are against showing their actual new car inventory on their website. I understand why; we can usually get whatever the consumer wants even if we do not have it in stock. However, the average consumer is looking for instant gratification and dealers risk loosing one of "our customers" to the dealer that has the car in stock.
So what is the answer? Do you display new car inventory or not?
The latest statistic according to Kelley Blue Book Marketing Research shows that consumers want to see dealers list their new vehicle inventory online. Well of course they do!! They want instant gratification AND if you are not already aware, my generation and this upcoming generation are NOT loyal to anyone!! So if you don't have the car…we will go the dealer that does.
Is there a way around this while also serving today's consumer?
Does a vehicle configurator fill this void?
I thought I knew the answer to this but now I'm not sure. Since I'm a smaller store and I go up against some really big dogs less then 50 minutes away, I use an inventory tool (shameless plug for Homenet IOL here) that allows me to "lock inventory", building my own virtual inventory. I sometimes lock a car as in-stock if I know I have another vehicle like it in transit from the port. This allow me to get my inventory in front of the consumers before it hits the showroom floor, while also allowing me to have a larger selection of vehicles to display.
If you are reading this again, you will notice that I have made a few changes and deletions to the last few paragraphs. After reading it for myself several times, I can see where a few readers are coming from with their comments. I have also given some deep thought into the practice of locking particular vehicles in stock and concluded maybe some of my readers are right. I've thought long and hard about this and somehow I took 2 steps backwards and maybe became a product of that "old school" dealer mentality; something that I'm not an advocate of. I want to thank DealerRefresh readers for their opinions and feedback but mostly for bringing me back to reality!
Last year when I had the good fortune of buying a Mercedes (Shouts out to Peter B), I felt completely pigeon-holed into an old school marketing scheme that stems from what you bring up here.
I won't get in to it here in a comment, but the whole experience was very revealing to the new vehicle marketing strategy of Mercedes-Benz. As a customer I felt, as you put it, ungratified. Especially when the sales rep stated that if I had the ability to search for what I wanted then he would be out of a job.
This would not be the case. Posting new vehicle inventory on the Web is important and it does not need to threaten the sales reps' job security. The search tool that MB dealers have (is it NetStar or something?) is extremely powerful and I think if the data contained in there was made available to consumers then it could change the face of buying new cars in a very positive way. Customers would be empowered and the sales process would just need to be modified in a way where the reps are still important because when it comes down to it, human beings are still important in the buying/selling process.
Ryan, I totally see where you are coming from. BUT..if you allow this to happen from the manufacturers stance, you are catering to the larger dealers only. At that point you may as well shut down the smaller dealers and sell your cars from a WalMart like facility. There are more politics in the dealer side of this business then you can ever imagine!!
I had never personally seen the merit in posting new car inventory–I always thought along the lines of Jeff's "any dealer can get any vehicle" comment.
In retrospect, I think Jeff brings up a great point about instant gratification. I do not, however, agree with the choice to "lock" sold inventory to prevent it from being deleted. In fact, our system also allows inventory locks, but the feature was primarily designed because often the ISM has no control over bad data in their DMS which might cause a vehicle to errantly be deleted each day.
As much as my bias should perhaps be, I am still not sure I agree with advising dealers to post new car inventory (although many of our dealers do just that).
I think my largest concern with this is that if you try to satiate the consumers desire for instant gratification, you may not be able to truly convince them "we can get anything you need". It almost seems to me that this should be an either / or approach and simply taking the stance that you can get anything anytime may work better.
I also think that by and large the manufacturer sites do a great job of helping the customer determine what they desire which simply means its important to build a relationship / atmosphere conducive to the customer feeling comfortable with your dealership.
I fear that if you are showing inventory and DONT have exactly what they want it may be more of a risk than if you simply opt to build a relationship saying you can get any vehicle. But I do waiver even as i type this. Hmm. I guess that makes this a very good topic of debate! I look forward to reading others' opinions.
The buyer looks for a certain new car at the local dealership lot, does not see it, goes home and looks online, and finds it elsewhere – instant gratification! The internet has made inventory access incredibly open to today's consumer, and while each dealer might want to be the primary source of new car inventory in their region, impatient shoppers are going online to see who actually has the car they want in stock. It is just part of the reality of today's more educated (and impatient) consumer. While the politics of dealerships might not like this, I believe the dealerships that understand and adjust to best meet today's consumers' needs will lead into the future.
Dealership size should not matter.
Every consumer is different but I prefer to have the ability to do my own searching and then contact my local dealer to deliver the car I want to buy. Some consumers prefer not to do their own searching and so their local dealer would have to handle that for them. And some consumers prefer not to associate with the dealer at all which in that case if you don't have new vehicles online then you are cutting yourself out of that consumer market.
Given these 3 scenarios, it is in the dealer's best interest to have the vehicles online. I think what is important is for the OEM to design a sales model that is in the best interest of the customer, which is to have new vehicles displayed online, but also in a way that works for the dealer. OEMs and dealers not putting all their inventory online are looking after their own interests, not the customers.
I don't know how all franchises work, but I do know that if I find a vehicle at an MB dealership within a 100 or so miles from where I live, my local MB dealer will have it transferred to his own store for the delivery. Point being, if the dealers work together to provide what the customers want then the fact that the desired vehicle is not on the lot closest to me is irrelevant. No matter how small the dealership is.
#1). For every dealer that does not post its inventory, it moves hundreds of shoppers to one that does. The windfall goes to the dealer that embraces the risk!
#2). Lost sales cut 2 ways.
Grab a map, draw a circle that is 4 hours wide around your store(s). You've Identified your Internet Marketplace. So, lets leverage this opportunity. let's take your inventory off line & Burn the map! Not logical.
#3). The Car shopping experience takes weeks & months to complete. The internet is the ONLY medium that the consumer uses throughought the entire cycle. Why would you abandon this?
#4). Net' Shoppers reward transparency.
Relationships are the cornerstone of all businesses.
#5). Your words speak of rewarding an "impatient" customer. What you're really speaking about is the consumers lack of loyalty. Customers not loyal? Short sighted, judgemental, What?? Can't be! Tell me it aint so!
#6). Are you better than your competitors?
Find a way to communicate it!
p.s. atta boy's to Jeff K. for his Digital Dealer Cover Story!
I understand there are two different philosophies on displaying inventory. Some dealers feel it is crucial to display actual inventory, showing the customer every thing they have on the lot.
Others prefer not to show the actual inventory as they feel there is a tendency to lose customers that are looking for a specific vehicle that is not in their inventory.
Most people do not fully understand the metrics of Internet / ecommerce business. Folks, it is a numbers game. The demographics of the consumer buyer is what it is all about.
The dealer who is here to do business is not there to play games they are here to sell cars and if you do not show the client what you have they will not buy.
The dealer that is driven to have the client come in to show them something they do not want will invest the time to find out the client really did want the White Honda Accord with a moon roof and left. The main issue is the old school dealers/managers who are only concerned with "Git them in the store" and then we will roll around in the parking lot and brow beat them into a purchase.
We had one manager who advocated what Jeff states, inflate your inventory and "git them in" We had one lady last week that called and asked if we had a particular Tahoe in stock and the desk manager told her yes and to come down right away. She did and it was not in stock, she is also an attorney and married to an attorney. This has turned into a fun deal.
The fact remains that most consumers will go to the OEM website first and then is directed to the local sites; this group is as high as 90%. They will see what the dealer has in inventory when the go to the OEM site anyway.
What about the dealers who constantly have to battle with an archaic DMS company that creates "hostile" information environments with more up to date vendors? I think most dealers find themselves in these situations, and may opt to have a virtual inventory over all the mistakes these "hostile environments" create.
The immediate response is: don't use those archaic DMS companies. The retort to that is: show me something better that can handle accounting, service, F&I, and all the other back-end things the larger DMS companies do. Do you manually input every single used car into an up-to-date inventory control piece? What if you have over 2000 vehicles in stock? Do you pay an outside vendor $30 a car to get this done?
I'm getting way off on a tangent. We show our actual inventory, and I have no plans to change that. Of course, we're one of the big dogs in our market so we have more inventory than most of our competitors. However, I have certainly struggled virtual inventory debate for a long time. I think the answer depends on too many factors to make it Black or White.
How could this not matter? The consumers wants selection.
Believe it or not..it still seems to work for 80+ % of the population. Remember, it's rare that people buy exactly what they first initially set out to for. I have customers come in all the time on a specific car, only to purchase something TOTALLY different. I had a customer in here yesterday on a SLK (convertible roadster) and left in an ML350 SUV.
I want the opportunity to build a relation and wow the customer with our service. I figure if a customer sees one of our "virtual cars" and they are not in my market, they are going to call first. My sales people nor managers would never intentionally tell a customer that we have a car when we do not. However, we would mention that we could possibly have that car in our storage facility but it would not be available for a test drive at that moment. It's an easy objective to overcome.
If all your new vehicles are online, there's a chance your customer might not see the vehicle they are looking for. If none of your new vehicles are online, it's 100% assured your customer won't see the vehicle they are looking for.
But "locking" your already delivered inventory so that it still shows as available when, in fact, it is not? Why does our industry continue to do these things that perpetuate our already well-deserved crappy reputation?
Geesh Steve, let me pick myself up off the DoJo floor as my left eye starts to quickly swell.
I fully respect your position but..I have a few remarks for conversation.
So I'm assuming it's ok for a dealer to have pre-built virtual inventory, but if I lock in some popular inventory that I could have at my dealer in less then 24 hours, that is not? Who is to say that I don't have another one just like it on the way. What about displaying inventory that still resides at the port and has not made it's final destination? Would that be so wrong, does that too perpetuate an already well-deserved crappy reputation?
So far I have not had any customer complaints and can credit several sales to this practice. Maybe it's the Mercedes consumer? I don't know. I'm sorry if I have left some people down with my virtual inventory practices.
Maybe we will have to agree to disagree on this matter. But, hey that's the great thing about all of this. Sharing ideas and opinions while having debatable conversations.
I must have received 100 leads on them. Most were goofs screwing around who couldn't even afford a V6 Mustang. A few were collectors but they said, "Oh, I'll NEVER pay MSRP". When I told them that most dealers are charging EACH OTHER $10,000 to $15,000 OVER MSRP if they'd even give the car up they said, "That's Crazy".
Ford wonder's why they have problems making a profit. When they DO make a car everybody wants they decide to only build a few of them. Why should they do this?
To get back on track,I have all of my inventory online and its polled from Reynolds and Reynolds so give or take a few days after its sold, its gone.
Customer: Do you still have this Diesel Excursion in stock?
Me: No I'm sorry we sold that a last night. Are you only looking for an Excursion?
Me: The "Dancing now begins" to try and flip them to something that I DO have.
That's why I try to keep mine as up to date as possible.
My new car inventory is also up to date but our website is very slow, and sorely lacking in convenience so I get few leads from it anyway.
IMHO the BEST leads are from Ford where the customer HAS found a vehicle in your inventory, the next best are from a Ford configurator where the customer tells you what they want fairly specifically.
But honestly, its all in reaching the customer to start the dialogue so any lead beats no lead. IMHO (yet again) having your inventory relatively correct is the way to start the dialogue off on the right foot.
You can turn off certain vehicles with your lead providers. I don't buy GT3, GT, or Turbo leads for my Porsche store. When the Prius was super hot I didn't buy those leads for my Toyota store.
Just call your lead providers and ask them how to work this out.
This is my take on it: you should post SOMETHING. If you don't post some iteration of your inventory, you're off to a very poor start with your buyer. Almost every single dealer's site stats show the New Inventory page as the #1 searched page… if not #2 or #3 behind Pre-Owned or Specials, which is usually an anomale due to a dealer's advertising focus. Point is, when the average user comes to your website, new inventory is what they're looking for.
Let's try out an analogy. You're in a mall, looking for suits. So you have your choice of several stores, though they're all at opposite sides of the mall. You walk into a store, and they have every size but yours on the rack. Would you bolt out of there? No, you'd ask if they have your size or are getting it in sometime soon. Now if they say they don't have it but will get it in soon, then maybe you leave, and maybe you don't. Depends on how soon you need the suit, and whether you need to try it on, and whether the store employee made enough of an impression that you'd want to give him the business, etc.
But if you walked into that store and they had no suits whatsoever on the racks, I think the most you would muster up is something along the lines of "where the hell are the suits??" before walking down to the other store.
If a consumer understands that this is the case, then there's no need to show inventory online, is there? In fact, the consumer creates more work for himself by rummaging around the net to find the car he wants, only to go to his local dealer for it. Ryan, if you walked into my store and told me that you searched every dealer within a 100 miles to find such-and-such car, and now you want me to get it for you, I would ask you why you spent so much time doing the legwork yourself when you could've just sent in a lead to me and asked me to locate that car for you.
But that's just an argument against Ryan's particular comment. The fact is that most consumers aren't looking in a 100 mile radius, and most consumers aren't as loyal to their local store as Ryan seems to be. Indeed, one of the primary goals of a dealer's Internet presence is to draw from markets other than their own immediate market area, right? So I don't want to hear about Ryan's loyalty to his local store if I'm the second closest dealer to him… I want to hear that he came to my website instead, because it's atop the search engines, and that he sent me a lead that says "do you have any AMG CL's in stock? If not, can you find me a black/charcoal one?".
Yes, I realize I can turn of Shelby GT Leads (which I did with ALL of my providers).
My complaint on that particular car was more about Ford not marketing their cars well but also not building the "RIGHT" cars when they have them either.
As far as Mitch's comments, I've had several customers lately do exactly what he said. They admitted that I was the only Ford dealer who responded AND gave them a price. Yet they went to the other dealer who was closer to them because it was more convenient. Yes, I'm 11 miles from the west side of Cincinnati but come on, 11 miles????
They also searched all over and couldn't find what they wanted or couldn't work the "tool" provided by Ford to find what they wanted. When I told them I'd be happy to locate it, they didn't respond. After about 10 emails and 5 or 6 phone calls, they say, "Oh, I bought one this weekend at dealer X", or "Will you please stop emailling me? Ten emails are too many, you're too pushy". OF course, the fact that those were sent over 3 or 4 weeks didn't phase them as they didn't bother to check their email OR their spam folder.
The CORE of the problem is we're talking about lost shoppers due to a lack of inventory (variety).
Problem: Now you have to craft the "language" on the page to educate the shopper that its not in stock, but is avalible for sale! You already craft language for ARBS (All Ready Been Sold) cars, in this case It's 100% avail. for sale!
Problem: Your web inventory system needs a method to manually add and remove units.
*for those who may ask… you don't copy units you already have, just the ones that would round out your presentation!
And… Of course, don't put their name in your presentations, YOU want to sell the unit!
When I moved from a Volkswagen / Mazda dealer to my current position at a Mercedes dealer, I figured that If I applied what I was using at the previous dealer to my Mercedes dealer, I was going to explode out of the box. BUT..I wasn't totally right.
I could get a VW customer to travel 50+ miles, pass 3 other VW dealers to save a few bucks (remember, this was 5-6 years ago). This is not the case with the average Mercedes consumer.
I too was witnessing this in the beginning. I would have customers say the exact same thing.
Rob – "When I told them I'd be happy to locate it, they didn't respond. After about 10 emails and 5 or 6 phone calls, they say, "Oh, I bought one this weekend at dealer X".
After hearing that too many times myself and ultimately tracking my ROI for marketing and purchasing lease outside my market, I found it was not making sense. This is why I use only use 1 lead service and I focus on my own back yard and a few areas that could be on the fence.
To quote myself above "I could get a VW customer to travel 50+ miles, pass 3 other VW dealer".
Alex Snyder touched on something over in the High traffic with low conversions? Is this a franchise-related problem? posting. I believe many of our customers are in their second phase/time of using the internet for influencing their vehicle purchase. I'm sure 99% were not too impressed with their first experience contacting a dealer via a website or even a 3rd party lead service, most dealers were not responding to the consumer at all or was telling them they need to visit the showroom floor for more information. In the consumers mind; what is the difference if I use their website or just walk in? I think many have caught on to this.
One word..SERVICE Whether your product is a high end import or one of the domestics..the customer wants service. How many times do you have to make money on an Internet new car deal to realize that you did not sell them a vehicle based on price but rather earned their business with VIP service and product knowledge. The average automobile consumer is smarter and more diverse than we(general term) give them credit for. In reference to inventory, the days of 'pretending' to have what the customer wants will fade. So far the majority of the comments I have read sound very 'old school' in reference to having a database of imaginary inventory. Give credit where credit is due. The average Internet consumer will have the ability to determine where vehicles are. It's the dealership that provides the service and convenience that will win the deal. How many appointments have to show up at your dealership without so much as a vehicle ready for them to test drive(and no it doesn't have to be the exact one) or a salesperson who knows how to sell value vs price. The dealerships that provide that VIP service will 'win' in the end. Set up your dealerships to provide unparalleled service and watch the flock follow. My own experience has shown me that the dealer who goes the extra step to make the customer feel that they are in control is the dealer that will beat the 'BIG' dealer that sells purely based on inventory or price. Sell the appointment. The whole goal of Internet Marketing as with all other forms of media is to do one thing..get the customer to visit your dealership. I think that the customers you 'miss' because you did not have a particular vehicle in stock have far less impact on your sales than the ones that you try to convince you have a car in stock that you do not have. Bring them in on the promise that they are important, you will have "A" vehicle available for them to drive and they will have a New/Pre-Owned specialist available to them for their appointment. I can't tell you how many floor ups ask their salesman..Whats the deal with the Internet VIP banner above fresh clean vehicles outside our dealership? I wonder how many of them will change their buying habits on the next vehicle they purchase?
Thanks for your feedback for for answering the question "Where to go from here?" I was hoping someone would jump on that and give some opinions.
I totally agree with you. Service is where it's at and if you can provide the VIP service, you have the better chance off making the sale. Yes you always have you a percentage of consumers that are all about price and some will never give you the opportunity to provide the VIP service from the beginning, but they are a small percentage.
I hope you're right. I know you do not agree with my "old school" outlook on this subject, but it has been working very well and I have not had one complaint. It really comes down to how you handle the consumer.
I would This has not proven to be true as of yet for my particular dealer and market.
It's interesting to see so many different points of view on this subject. It does however seem that most do not agree with displaying "virtual inventory" on their websites.
Again, thanks for you feedback.
Easily get "human personality" into the presentation (where text cannot do easily.
Helps cross the "great divide".
Excellent shopper feedback (so far).
Great web site and sales tool. The other great tool is the comparison chart with the clients vehicle of choice and the competition. This is a great tool if your lucky to have strong brands.
The service issue is a given, most dealers with strong reputable service process and program will have strong sales of new and pre-owned vehicles. It is all about giving the customer what they are looking for and they having trust in the dealers core values.
Most dealers forget this in the self gratification chase for the sale.
Arkona is one that is converting 15 to 20 stores a month. Microsoft is in Beta testing in Europe on a DMS Program that I have been told is excellent and very cost effective, 40-60 % cheaper than REYREY and ADP.
These new DMS programs will make it much easier for dealers to evolve into the new millennium without the baggage the old systems bring with them as well as the high cost of setting up and maintaining them.
One of the bright spots is this will allow us to attract new personnel into the business. This will allow for the "old school" dealer managers and personnel to relinquish control and allow new bright / marketing / sales/ and management people to create new processes for management and owners.
How many times have I seen a bright young person come into the business, look at the DMS System and say wow this is still being used?
I think the DMS process will be changing for the better over the next few years and we will have many more opportunities as dealers.
If you are reading this again, you will notice that I have made a few changes and deletions to the last few paragraphs of the posting. After reading it for myself several times, I can see where a few readers are coming from with their comments. I have also given some deep thought into the practice of locking particular vehicles in stock and concluded maybe some of my readers are right. I've thought long and hard about this and somehow I took 2 steps backwards and maybe became a product of that "old school" dealer mentality; something that I'm not an advocate of. I want to thank DealerRefresh readers for their opinions and feedback but mostly for help bringing me back to reality!
To the anonymous poster – I believe you have my name mistaken as Brad and yes I deleted your comments, please read the rules. If you would like to stay anonymous, you can always email me direct.
Any thoughts on my "Cyber-Share Inventory" idea?
I think that's a great idea. I guess the hard part would be working with the other dealers. If you had a great relationship with a few dealers, I think one could pull this off.
I would want to be sure all the dealers had a good process for taking photos and descriptions before I was hosting their inventory on my site though.
Also, you don't copy units you already have, just the ones that would round out your presentation!
You are correct. I'm only displaying cars that are in transist from the factory as of now.
Sorry about the rudimentary HTML-like quotes, but I could not figure out a better way to do this without HTML capabilities. Anyway….
I don't know much about Arkona, other than what a two of my friends have said about it, and that is not fully positive. They say it integrates worse with the newer technologies (CRM tools, Inventory management tools, etc) because Arkona views those companies as competition….A.K.A. the "hostile" environment.
Unfortunately, Microsoft is still years and years away from having anything worth even speaking of.
We absolutely display our inventory. Perhaps the Toyota buyer is not as savvy as the MB buyer, but my website shows thousands of vehicles as available or in stock. Most customers web up on a vehicle whether it is in stock or not. Perhaps ebcause the average MB buyer wants a "new" new car, and not something with dealer trade miles on it is where the difference is.
But you can think of it this way: For every customer you lose because you don't have THE car, you'll gain another for the one you DO have.
And as we all know, better gross, Customer Satisfaction and Vehicle Delivery Quality on in stock units, right?
Allan built the NeoSynergy DMS as well as the Auto-Mate (now Dimension Data) DMS that has > 90% market share in South Africa.
Cross-franchise consolidation, yes. True web-based architecture, yes. Rich GUI, yes. Lower cost than R&R and ADP and UCS, most definitely. Document scanning and image archiving, native. Vastly improved internal controls vs. legacy systems, most definitely.
An aggressive startup with few equals, yes.
I was one of the founders many, many moons ago. I do still have a minor stock holding (full disclosure) but no ongoing relationship.
Just a thought if you'd like to explore an option you may not have been aware that you had.
Oh… and it is built on world-class technology from Progress Software out of Boston (look them up on the NASDAQ).
Effective sales practice is to effectively manage consumer expectations. "Come on in, we have it" is a lie if you don't. "We can get anything" is a lie if you can not.
1) Configure what you want.
Isn't that what you would do in the showroom?
Why would you do less for an Internet consumer? I'll give you a hint: because your dealership's use of the Internet is nothing more than an advertising medium.
Until you adopt a true eCommerce capability where consumers can actually do meaningful shopping on your sites, just stick to whatever your effective Internet advertising practices are.
I make no secret that my company has just such an eCommerce system for a dealer to provide to their consumers. It is also a hybrid approach – confirmed email to get in… so dealer gets more + better leads even if don't buy within system… but that is not the point of this post.
If you are a dealership and the point of your Internet strategy is to get consumers to call or email so they'll come in and buy, then set a true, effective expectation and support it with the "calls to action" on your website.
He (or she) who has the best experience wins with the Internet consumer (which is all of them these days).
As 1 in 7 people in the US today are Hispanic, do any of the online systems allow for Spanish language content to be displayed in parallel? Is this an issue, or a non-issue?
Ron, not sure how this is relevant to this posting (other then building a link to your website) BUT, yes there are several providers that do offer Spanish translation on their dealer websites. It really depends on a dealers demographics to whether or not they need Spanish translation on their website. Could be a decent topic of conversation in the future though.


Science does not always tell us the whole story.
When it comes to the age of life, no human was there to actually see it created, so we have to rely on our interpretation of the evidence. Interestingly, there is one eyewitness account, written in stone by the witness Himself. The fourth commandment in Exodus 20 and 31 records what God wrote with his own finger: "For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed" (Ex. 31:17). That may not tell us the exact date of the creation, but it does clear up any reasonable question about how long it took, at least according to God.
So, we'll look at 5 lines of evidence — 2 of them in this Part I — from living (and dead) things to see what they suggest about how old life is. Let's start with dinosaurs, because everyone knows they are cool and that they lived tens of millions of years ago… except for me and some others who are looking at the evidence they have left behind.
Mary Schweitzer did something that anyone who knew about fossil dinosaurs wouldn't have done. She took a fragment of dinosaur bone and put it into a solution that dissolved away the minerals. This is similar in principle to the classic experiment of putting a chicken bone in vinegar. When the mineral component of the bone is dissolved in the vinegar, the protein component is left behind and you can tie the bone in a knot without breaking it. The problem with what Dr. Schweitzer did is that everyone knows that there could be no protein component left in dinosaur bones because proteins don't last for tens of millions of years.
Knowing that there should not be proteins in dinosaur bones, you can hardly imagine the shock when Schweitzer reported that there was abundant protein in her dinosaur bone samples. The most reasonable explanation would seem to be that the bones are not millions of years old. However, some scientists, including Schweitzer, have suggested that maybe proteins are preserved in the presence of iron, or when they are associated with the mineral part of bone material. These explanations seem quite optimistic.
In addition, it isn't just protein that has been found associated with fossils, other biological molecules have also been found and I, along with some colleagues, have accumulated hundreds of papers about this from the peer reviewed scientific literature. At least from my perspective as a biologist, suggesting that proteins and other biological molecules have lasted for tens of millions of years is equivalent to claiming a miracle. It is surprising enough that they could have lasted thousands of years buried in the ground.
In Part II we will analyze three additional lines of evidence about the origin of life.


Sometimes you find yourself unable to really sit down and do anything productive. Yesterday, I managed a good word count for NaNo. An excellent word count, actually. Over 3,000 words in just one day. But that was a Sunday. My first Monday amounts to very many fewer words.
It's not the worst--I'm not that far behind actually. I am, in fact, ahead of where I need to be if I had only made the goal of writing 1667 words per day on November 1st. So there's that. Everyday is not the best day; that's my lesson for today. Sometimes, you just don't make your goal. Don't let that stop you. Forgive yourself and carry on.
Life made up of failures. But there are plenty of successes among those failures. Focus too much on the failures, and you'll be swallowed whole by them. Tomorrow will be a better day. Maybe not the best, but definitely better.
A great thing did happen today. Muzzleland Press wrote a review about Broken Worlds. I think it's fair to say that we didn't get 5-out-of-5 stars, but we did demonstrate that Broken Worlds is a quality piece of fiction from a new editor and a relatively new publisher. Every single time we produce something, we improve our ability to produce that thing. I'm honored by Muzzleland's willingness to review our work, and I expect that the next anthology will be better. Not because Broken Worlds wasn't, but because we should always be striving to improve ourselves.
I hope I'm improving myself until the day I die, both in the way I write and in the way I edit. And in all the ways that have nothing to do with my career in literature.
To Write or to Edit?
I never wanted to be an editor. Literally. I have not once had the dream of reading other people's work for fun or money. I've dreamed many times of being a writer on and off since the fourth grade. As far as being an editor, it always seemed more like being a glorified proofreader or a teacher who reads essays written by people at all levels of wordcraft skill.
It's all those things and more actually. Broken Worlds is one of the most amazing things I feel like I've done. I owe so much to the authors who contributed their work to this anthology. I love being an editor and, honestly, I'm looking forward to doing it again.
But for now it's time to get back to my own writing. That's why I've joined the frenzied rush that is NaNoWriMo for the month of November. As I write this, I just got back from the Midnight Kick-Off event, where some fellow Murderers and I joined other writers from the Tulsa area to work on our 50,000-word goal. I have to admit that it was slow-going, but it's been some time since I've sat down to crank out my own work.
I'll be doing a lot more of that this month. I have about 1210 more words to write before 11:59pm. But first, I think I'll sleep on my current, untitled short story.
Oh, and yes, I haven't posted a blog since midsummer, but I've been pretty active everywhere else. If you want to keep up, you should subscribe to my new newsletter. It'll let you know what I've been doing, whether it's for my own writing career or for that of others.
This is the latest update on the Broken Worlds anthology.
As you can see to the right, I printed out the whole thing. It's about 270 pages of great stories. All that's left is to dots the I's and cross the T's.
The Kindle version will be ready on July 31st, but unfortunately the paperback won't be ready until about a week after that. This is because we have to order a copy ourselves to make sure the proof is a quality product. This anthology has been our biggest project yet, and we want to know it's perfect before it goes out.
Thank you to all our authors for their support, and to my boss for her help with all the nitty gritty essentials.
Future updates on the Broken Worlds anthology will be published through this website, the A Murder of Storytellers website, and all of our respective social media platforms. So make sure you're following A Murder of Storytellers on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and all those other places. And while you're at it, follow me, too. I always have important stuff to say.
At this point, I should say that I'm not using the Royal "We," so much as I'm referring to myself and to the rest of the Murder of Storytellers team.
If you made it onto our second read list, then you'll be receiving accept or decline emails over the first week and a half of July. We expect all of our final selections to have been made by July 10th, so—again—if you haven't received an email by then please let me know through the Murder site, my contact page, Facebook, or Twitter.