Just when you think there’s a website for everything under the sun, you come across something like CarTango .
CarTango, according to their website, is the place where “Girl meets car” and where “your car soulmate is just a few clicks away.” An animated graphic shows the outline of a woman in a skirt and beehive hairdo making a “match” with a car.
If CarTango sounds like a place for a woman to fall in love with a car, then it’s doing exactly what it wants to do.
What is this? What exactly is going on with CarTango? CarTango is a website dedicated to helping female buyers through the process of buying a vehicle. It offers research tools, purchasing tools, and a buying process more geared toward women.
CarTango uses a four-step process:
- Determine the vehicle that meets a consumer’s personality and her needs
- Locate the right car through inventory listings
- Communicate anonymously with dealers about their vehicles for sale
- Invite dealerships to compete for their business.
So, for example, a woman logs on to CarTango. After a brief survey, the site recommends the Honda Civic. Cartango searches through the Honda cars at various Honda dealers to find the right Honda Civil for that woman. Up to three dealers, then, compete for the sale.
One of the ideas behind this website is that it will make it easier for women to find and buy their ideal car. CarTango claims that it eliminates some of the frustrating aspects of the purchasing process for female buyers. For example, it turns the often-frustrating process of price negotiation on its head. Rather than trying to negotiate with a sales person, the female car buyer using this website gets dealers to compete for her purchase.
CarTango is not without its critics, however. Some women claim that CarTango plays on the fears of women, and that it actually perpetuates the kind of behavior that it claims to be avoiding. In addition, it makes all sorts of assumptions about what women do or don’t know about cars, or what they are or aren’t looking for based on a very few relatively superficial questions.
If you’ve checked out a Honda car on CarTango but would like to see it in person, come by your local Honda Dealer right here in the Lehigh Valley and take a look or a test drive today.