In most geographic areas around the world, vehicles are used by persons as a mode of transportation from one geographic location to another. Currently, there are many types of vehicles used for transportation. One type of vehicle is an automobile that includes a chassis supported by four or more wheels (e.g., a car or a truck). Another type of vehicle is a motorized two-wheeled vehicle, which may be in the form of a motorcycle or a scooter. All of these vehicles allow a person to travel a greater distance in a shorter period of time than the person could travel by foot.
In many cases, these vehicles are purchased from a third-party provider, sometimes referred as a “dealer”, who may operate as an agent for a manufacturer. For instance, an automobile manufacturer may have hundreds or thousands of dealers at different locations around the world. Depending on the locations of these dealers, the dealer may have to compete against dealers selling other types of automobiles as well as dealers selling the same automobiles in a neighboring geographic region (e.g., neighboring city, neighboring county, etc.).
With the increased popularity of the Internet over the last decade, a greater amount of purchasing decisions are being made after reviewing materials on a dealer's website. For instance, a potential customer may access a website of a dealer to review the dealer's vehicle inventory. More specifically, potential customers may review the images for certain vehicles of interest (e.g., exterior and interior images of the vehicle) to determine if the dealer has a particular vehicle of interest and possibly which dealer to visit if she or he wants to inspect the vehicle before purchasing.
In some cases, these vehicle images are “lot” images, namely digital photographs of the actual vehicle that are taken by the dealer or by a professional photographer hired by the dealer. For these images, the exterior and/or interior of the vehicle are captured along with the actual area surrounding the vehicle during the photoshoot (e.g., parking lot, parking garage, etc.). The area surrounding the vehicle offers little assistance in differentiating a dealer from its competitors and the use of lot images greatly increases the dealer's overall marketing costs. Also, when the lot images are taken by the dealer, in some cases, these images may include artifacts (e.g., window glare, shadows, less than optimal resolution, etc.), which impede conveyance of the actual features of the vehicle.
In other cases, the vehicle images may be generic representations (stock image) for the specific vehicle make/model/trim, and thus, the images may not accurately represent the specific vehicle of interest. As an example, the automobile of interest may include a particular factory-ordered option, such as a navigation system with a compact disc (CD) player for example. However, the stock images and lot images may merely illustrate the interior color and a generic interior layout, not each and every factory-ordered option desired included on the specific (actual) vehicle such as the CD player option with the navigation system.
The lack of accurate representations of a specific vehicle of interest along with customized dealer background and/or foreground information may adversely affect a potential customer's decision to purchase the vehicle from that dealer.