Photo: Acton Crawford on Unsplash.com
Remember the time when you would walk into several dealerships when you were looking for a car but ended up not buying anything? Or when you were a kid and asked your folks to take you out to look at cars? Well, it appears that people do not do that anymore, according to a recent study.
Back in the day, dealerships would call people who inquired about vehicles but without buying anything "tire kickers," but recent research notes that the behavior is on a massive decline. While back in 2019, one in three people who were entering a dealership intending to buy a vehicle on that day, the percentage has risen to 53 percent of all first-time visitors.
In other words, if only three out of ten people who walked into a dealership in 2019 wanted to buy a vehicle that day, now five in ten people want to sign a contract to buy a vehicle by the time they leave the premises.
The change is dramatic, and it shows that buyer behavior is changing while also being correlated with the fact that the proportion of people visiting a dealership for the first time has increased from 53 percent to 63 percent since 2019.
The other shift comes in the form of telephone inquiries, which has increased from 57 percent in 2019 to 71 percent in 2022, while the proportion of people who contact the dealership before their visit is about the same as in 2019 (38 percent in 2022, and 36 percent in 2019).
According to the study made by Auto Trader using feedback from 1,000 car buyers across 50 different dealerships of varying sizes, customers who contact the dealership before their purchase end up digitally completing up to 42 percent of the jobs necessary for the completion of the purchase, and seven out of ten of them are far more likely to complete the purchase deal on the day that they arrive at the showroom.
In contrast, customers who prefer to refrain from inquiring with dealership employees about vehicles before visiting are not as likely to buy a vehicle on the day of their visit, and they will need more time to browse, as well as be classified as "potential buyers," not "ready buyers."
In other words, if only three out of ten people who walked into a dealership in 2019 wanted to buy a vehicle that day, now five in ten people want to sign a contract to buy a vehicle by the time they leave the premises.
The change is dramatic, and it shows that buyer behavior is changing while also being correlated with the fact that the proportion of people visiting a dealership for the first time has increased from 53 percent to 63 percent since 2019.
The other shift comes in the form of telephone inquiries, which has increased from 57 percent in 2019 to 71 percent in 2022, while the proportion of people who contact the dealership before their visit is about the same as in 2019 (38 percent in 2022, and 36 percent in 2019).
According to the study made by Auto Trader using feedback from 1,000 car buyers across 50 different dealerships of varying sizes, customers who contact the dealership before their purchase end up digitally completing up to 42 percent of the jobs necessary for the completion of the purchase, and seven out of ten of them are far more likely to complete the purchase deal on the day that they arrive at the showroom.
In contrast, customers who prefer to refrain from inquiring with dealership employees about vehicles before visiting are not as likely to buy a vehicle on the day of their visit, and they will need more time to browse, as well as be classified as "potential buyers," not "ready buyers."
Google News