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Wednesday, February 11, 2009
What dealership will follow Saturn of Gwinnett’s lead?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This is bad.
Real bad.
Those are the words of Doug Bachtel, a consumer economics and demographics expert at the University of Georgia. He knows Gwinnett well because he’s researched and studied the county’s spectacular immigrant-driven economic growth for decades.
So when news broke that Saturn of Gwinnett had closed its doors, I gave him a call. Here’s his take on car dealerships in Gwinnett , from the mega-dealerships near the Mall of Georgia to Gwinnett Place Mall, U.S. Highway 78 and everything in between.
“This could be the start of something,” Bachtel told me. “Gwinnett is diversity with a captial “D.” It is not just black and white. It’s Hispanic. It’s Chinese. It’s other Asians, Indians, Eastern Europeans. Given that, it means these folks would be partial to all the different car companies. They wouldn’t just ‘Buy American.’
“Given the economic times we are in - and it took a while to get in it - if one of [the dealerships] goes belly-up, you can probably see a trickle-down effect.”
“It’s like a domino.”
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