c0lo writes:
"Following the ban on Tesla direct sale in New Jersey, Elon Musk wrote a message to the people of New Jersey on the Tesla Motor's blog, explaining why they don't want to go through dealers and what will happen next with the stores in New Jersey. To put a context around the issue: Tesla soared in consumer satisfaction, while Ford dropped and it's likely to continue dropping.
The post:
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Monday March 17 2014, @02:14PM
Its a static vs dynamic stability problem. Allowing mfgr owned dealers would result in GM coming in, undercutting all the locals for all other brands until they close... it would be like the walmart effect, pretty much, but even worse. You'd get competition only until the competitors declared bankruptcy and then it would be monopoly time.
What are you talking about? GM isn't the only giant automaker out there; Toyota is much larger, and Volkswagen is the biggest of all. Ford is also quite large, as are Fiat and BMW. (Here's a list.) [wikipedia.org]
In addition to that, how is GM going to undercut anyone? GM is only going to sell GM cars. If someone wants to buy a BMW or Mercedes, there's no way in hell they're going to buy a GM of any kind. Same goes for most Japanese car buyers, Volvo buyers, etc. There's tons of people out there who wouldn't buy a GM even if it meant paying a giant premium to avoid it. There's still tons of people who absolutely refuse to consider any American brand.
Mfgr-owned dealers would just result in lots of dealerships (just like now), all owned by the MANY different automakers; we'd just have lower prices since we wouldn't have annoying middlemen who are out to screw over the consumer and stain the reputation of the manufacturers.