A new survey from online listings site CarGurus finds that active online shoppers are willing to travel much further if they find the right vehicle. The survey randomly selected 1,000 Canadians over the age of 18 and found that 70 per cent of respondents who used four or more websites to research their new vehicle purchase, were willing to travel the furthest to buy a car.
“Historically, dealers were much less inclined to find leads in more distant areas, perhaps considering consumers located in far away areas to be a longshot for them,” said Sarah Welch, Senior Vice-President of Consumer Marketing at CarGurus, a consumer facing auto-shopping website with more than 800,000 unique user visits each month in Canada.
“But as auto shopping increasingly moves online, and what is clear from the survey, is that more people are willing to travel to find their new car,” explained Welch.
Shoppers who spend more than 10 hours conducting online research made up 30 per cent of respondents and said they would travel more than 200 km to buy an automobile.
Welch pointed out that the survey, released on March 16, demonstrated that consumers who have done their homework online, are ready to buy and that they should be “taken seriously by dealers.”
In addition to being willing to travel the furthest to buy a car, Canadians who visit more than four websites also visit four or more dealerships. While 44 per cent of Canadians who don’t go online to research cars are much likelier to visit only one dealership.
CarGurus is a free website service launched in 2006 by the former co-founder of TripAdvisor, Langley Steinert. CarGurus combines market data analysis and technology to provide new and used car information to more than 20,000 car dealerships across the U.S. and Canada. The Canadian site, CarGurus.ca, was launched in 2015.
