Pioneer Launches Best Buy Demo Tour of CarPlay, Android Auto

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Pioneer car

Pioneer Electronics, which to date remains the only aftermarket company to offer both CarPlay and Android Auto ready car radios, said it will hold consumer demonstrations of the technologies at Best Buy stores on weekends through September.

Pioneer has hired a promotional management company that will present the consumer demos.  This company will also join, on behalf of Pioneer,  the 2015 Best Buy Autotech Road Show– a 5 month training tour focused on educating the Best Buy Autotech staff about how to demonstrate, sell and install the latest car audio products sold in their stores.

Pioneer’s road show began in May in New Orleans and will hit 22 cities, host 42 training dates, 46 days of retail demos and cover more than 20,000 miles.

For Pioneer’s consumer demos, the Pioneer van (pictured above) will park near a Best Buy entrance and give CarPlay and Android Auto demonstrations to interested consumers as they walk in the Best Buy stores.

The last time Pioneer sponsored a tour like this was ten years ago, and to our knowledge, no car audio company has launched a consumer education tour on this scale in recent years.

Pioneer’s Ted Cardenas said, “I would also add that we’re having greater success getting people to receive the demos than we’ve had in the past (when demonstrating navigation, sound quality or bass). I believe this clearly indicates that smartphone connectivity has a much broader demographic appeal.”

The tour was conceived because “‘Connectivity’ has become such a widely used term, the consumer is inundated with messaging about the various accessories for their smartphone. Both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are instantly recognizable to most consumers as significantly different the first time they plug in their own device and see for themselves how easy it is to access and control their personal content.”

He continued, “We have heard ‘success’ stories from both independent retailers and Best Buy stores about consumers who were shopping for something completely different (security, auto-starts or in the case of Best Buy, software, TVs, or computer peripherals), but when exposed to a ‘plug-in’ demo of either Apple CarPlay or Android Auto immediately purchased the unit. It’s also significant that both of these technologies seem to carry much less hesitation than a traditional car stereo purchase, as both provide real safety and utility in addition to entertainment – in a way a more logical purchase than a luxury purchase.”

See Facebook for a list of cities and dates when retail demos will be held.

Pioneer also officially launched a rebate on radios including CarPlay and Android Auto-ready models June 1.

Source: Pioneer

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1 Comment

  1. Wishing you the best in your new location. Kicker just won’t seem to be the same without Randy.

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