Social impact for consumers

We understand SMG’s platforms to play an essential societal role by making markets more accessible and empowering consumers across financial backgrounds. By providing online marketplaces, we enable users to compare prices easily and find affordable options, making goods available to a broader segment of society. Beyond facilitating the sale of cost-effective second-hand and refurbished goods, we offer transparent information that helps consumers make well-informed buying decisions. While we view enabling affordable choices as a strategic opportunity for SMG, we remain mindful of evolving expectations around affordability, digital access, and inclusion. We aim to monitor relevant developments in ESG future risk assessments to ensure our approach stays aligned with societal expectations.

In 2024, AutoScout24 launched the AutoScout24 Direct platform, creating an online consumer-to-business car sales offering, setting new standards for online car sales. The platform connects private sellers directly with a network of 7,000 professional dealers, simplifying and accelerating the process of reintroducing vehicles to the market.

This streamlined solution empowers private sellers to sell their vehicles reliably, securely, and efficiently, reducing the challenges associated with private sales. By connecting them with a large network of dealers, the platform provides greater opportunities to leverage the transaction and receive fair remuneration for their assets. At the same time, it offers dealers a cost-effective method to expand their inventory.

In the real estate sector, SMG empowers consumers through unique market insights and tailored search experiences. By digitising the real estate space, we are able to guide professional and private customers through every step of their journey, reducing the complexity of this process with user-friendly solutions. This is particularly helpful for home seekers, enabling efficient, streamlined, and transparent decision-making.

We remain dedicated to pioneering secure and responsible business practices, which are essential for maintaining the trust of our customers who rely on our platforms. This includes fulfilling our social responsibility to the Swiss population, as outlined in the Cybersecurity and data protection section, which details SMG’s commitment to the two topics.