IHS Automotive Report: Autotrader 2014 Vehicle Purchase Study

Article Highlights

1. Roughly one out of three new vehicle buyers (36 percent) intend to purchase a specific make and model when they begin researching their new vehicle purchase. However, by the time they start visiting dealerships, most had narrowed their choice with less than one in four (24 percent) switching to a model other than the one they intended. Given this insight, OEMs and dealers need to ensure they are focusing resources on the initial shopping portion of the purchase funnel, prior to consumers visiting their showrooms.
2. Nearly 80 percent of new car buyers use the Internet to shop for their vehicles and this number swells to 94 percent for the Millennial generation. This makes up the majority of the 16 hours in total they spend shopping for their car.
3. New vehicle buyers use a variety of types of websites when shopping, including OEM, dealer, search, and third party auto shopping sites. Of these, third party sites play a key role in the auto shopping process as they are the most prevalent in terms of use among shoppers.