Who attempts to control the second-hand car market in Namibia?

The country's economy is going through a hard time, and used car sales is more and more overtaking new car sales in Namibia. This trend has been seen more clearly in the last five years, and, in our opinion, that was the trigger for Pupkewitz Group to enter into the competition with NamCars.net by establishing their own online marketplace, which was quite a reasonable move for them.

Having a huge amount of collateral property makes their financial resources extremely high, and the problem for Pupkewitz Group growth in general is not so much in financial resources as in human one, which is quite limited due to the lack of field-specific skills in the Namibian labour market. That is why it is so important to implement the Group’s strategy that would first lead to the crash of competitors and would force professional staff of the ruined business to continue work in the industry under their own brand afterwards.

And as opposed to their financial capability, we can only focus on giving our customers some good food for thoughts and make them aware of such possible long-term techniques used by their direct competitor, who is using an umbrella of "friends" and might strike very painfully in the most unexpected time.

Most of our customers are wise enough not to get into such “mousetrap”, but if Pupkewitz Group/Hodings  still gains full control over the entire online vehicles marketplace used by idependent car dealers, and such marketplace sends a message from the potential car buyer to advertised dealer with a 15 minute delay time for example, this time can be enough for the car buyer to be intercepted by Pupkewitz Motor sales team via SMS, phone call or other communication tools with specials for similar vehicles, better finance deal and so on, which could not be really proven so easy.

This possible issue creates extimly huge conflict of intetest. And that's what happened according to our unconfirmed information with a local franchised car dealership, who even initiated investigation against it, but we do not have further information about its outcome. However, we noted that this dealership no longer advertises their stock on thier marketplace as of the date of publishing this article.

Some dealerships support online marketplace associated with Pupkewitz Group, but mainly because of personal relationships with their management, rather than value, fully aware of what the catch may be. There are also customers who had no choice but to leave after Pupkewitz business hired away our contracted photographer, who had contacts of corporate clients that were not able to use NamCars without support of a photo agent. And employing a new one would not even pay for itself, since this part of NamCars service was always subsidized just to satisfy marketing demand.

Of course, healthy competition is good for the progress, and for sure forces us to work harder. But for the end customer in Namibia it became more expensive, despite the myths that competition is reducing the price. Some of our clients are paying for advertising to both marketplaces, but thereby essentially compete with themselves. Because the internet is unlike newspapers or other printed media with different audiences for each of them, the audience of car advertising marketplace online in such a small country like Namibia is practically the same at both online resources, and that is the message we are trying to bring to our customers. There is no need to compete with themselves paying twice for reaching the same audience.

The aggressive confrontation between NamCars and Pupkewitz's supported marketplace began a few years ago, after they started some dirty marketing campaigns against NamCars, and with no shade of ethics or conscience started using NamCars name on their own online portal in order to mislead people making them confuse their own website with NamCars. In order to avoid any claims they are using "Nam Cars" in two words on their website instead of "NamCars" in solid word, which does not make it less controversial. But who cares about ethics when it comes to business?

Currently we need to spend around N$1,000 per day on Google Ads buying keywords with our own name “namcars” just to prevent users from confusing the two marketplaces and going to competitor’s website, whose only strategy is buying “namcars” keyword on Google Ads instead of providing any real value developed on their own.

And since Google Ads service works as an auction bidding system, advertisers get their paid ads using some certain word for a penny if there are no other buyers for the same keyword. And having 4-5 dealers who advertise on NamCars and Pupkewitz supported website at the same time, they basically manage to compete with NamCars not even with their own money. They simply use their customers money and NamCars name for bringing to them the same leads that the original NamCars.net website would bring anyway.

Published on 07.02.2020 by NamCars.net

Like14

Dislike7

Tweet 1 Send 8 Share 152

Latest NamCars News

A Glimpse Into The Future With BMW

There are generally two types of car people: those that love cars and those that simply drive cars. However, there is one car brand that manages to polarise people to such an extent that they form an entirely new group, namely ones that loathes a specific brand. That brand? Those who own a BMW love ...

Celebrating Ford’s new Fiesta

Back when I was at university, I overheard a classmate loudly share his experience of various cars up to that point in his life. While most of his stories have faded away with the passing of time, one nugget managed to stick around in memory. “Do you know what Ford stands for?” he asked his ...

All Hail The King Of The Namib

Shhh! Do you hear that? That deep, thunder-like growl rolling across the Namib desert? Can you see where it’s coming from? No? Is it coming at you from all sides? Yes? Well, chances are that you are likely in the belly of the beast. Or, rather, stuck behind the wheel of (or at the very least a ...