Case Study: Leading Auto Manufacturing Company achieves $8M incremental profit by optimizing vehicle sales incentives with Applied Predictive Technologies

Optimizing Vehicle Sales Incentives

APT, a Mastercard company, helped a top‑ten automaker that was deploying dealer incentive programs but couldn’t reliably measure their impact because of high day‑to‑day sales variability. The manufacturer wanted to know whether a Mid‑size Sedan cash incentive truly drove incremental profit, which of two incentive formats (Fixed vs. Stair‑step) worked best, and which markets or dealerships would deliver the greatest return.

Using APT’s Test & Learn® software to compare test dealerships to matched control groups, the team isolated the program’s incremental effects: the Mid‑size Sedan saw a 21% weekly lift while the Compact Sedan was cannibalized (-39%), producing a net 4% average weekly unit increase across models. The Stair‑step format outperformed the Fixed structure, and the analysis identified dealer traits associated with stronger results (lower‑income areas, lower prior Mid‑size share, lower associate tenure). A targeted rollout to the top 75% of predicted responders and use of the Stair‑step design increased the program’s value by $8M.