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By Benjamin Hunting
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November 4, 2011
In a fresh bid to engage new car buyers outside of a traditional dealership setting, General Motors has partnered with wholesale warehouse club Costco in order to sell certain Chevrolet and GMC automobiles. This is not the first time that GM has partnered with a commercial giant in order to find new sales outlets for its vehicles, but it does create a unique incentive for current Costco members to consider a General Motors product.
The Costco Auto Program is being advertised as a "limited time offer," active between November 1, 2011 and January 3, 2012. During this period any Costco member who registers on the Costco Auto Program website and selects one of the qualifying vehicles will receive an "authorization number" and a "personal identification number (PIN)" that they can then take to a local dealership. Participating dealerships will then offer GM Preferred Pricing on each vehicle, which is similar to the discount that General Motors employees have access to when purchasing an automobile. In addition, an appealing aspect of the program is that it can be combined with any other rebate or incentive currently being offered on the vehicle being purchased, which adds extra savings to the bottom line.
The Costco Auto Program website allows Costco members to choose from eight automobiles that qualify for the promotion. These include the Chevrolet Silverado, Chevrolet Suburban, Chevrolet Tahoe, Chevrolet Traverse and their GMC equivalents (GMC Sierra, GMC Yukon XL, GMC Yukon, GMC Acadia). As an added wrinkle, any Costco member who agrees to complete "satisfaction survey" after going through the purchase process will be awarded a $500 "Costco Cash Card."
With company's like Fiat moving into retail malls in order to hawk its products, GM's partnership with Costco could be a tentative step towards offering actual automobile inventory on location at the national warehouse chain. The concept would not be entirely new to General Motors, as the company also offered cars and trucks through the Internet auction site eBay under the auspices of an arrangement where prospective buyers could make offers via online listings that featured a "buy it now" price. A short-lived effort designed to attract attention to the automaker as it recovered from bankruptcy, the eBay program was terminated September 30, 2009. Should the current Costco promotion prove a success, it would not be surprising to see further collaboration between the two corporations, in addition to new retail partnerships for the domestic car company.