As auto shoppers increasingly search online for their next purchase, people are willing to travel further than ever for the right vehicle, says a new survey released by CarGurus.
The study randomly selected 1,000 Canadians over the age of 18 to evaluate the connections between Internet research and car consumer behaviours; these included willingness to travel and the number of dealerships a survey respondent would visit.
The survey, released on March 16, found that 57 per cent of shoppers who spend more than 10 hours conducting online research said they would travel more than 200 km to buy an automobile.
Those who visited four or more websites also visited four or more dealerships and were willing to drive the furthest to purchase a car over other items like home appliances and furniture. In contrast, 44 per cent of Canadians who don’t go online to research cars are much likelier to visit only one dealership.
The days when a dealer could assume that a customer hadn’t done their car buying homework are over, says 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.
“If someone from that far away, who has been doing their research on an online site like CarGurus.ca, reaches out to contact a dealer, they’re likely to be ready to buy and quite interested in the car that they are contacting the dealer about,” says Welch. She added that these customers “should be taken seriously” by dealers and that being as transparent as possible about the car’s condition will earn the educated consumer’s trust. “They’re going to know a lot before they ever walk out onto the lot,” she says.
A key group that does a significant amount of their online homework before approaching a dealer, are Millennials, says Welch. She explains that Millennials are more likely to be mobile, shop on a mobile device and that they expect a high level of transparency when buying a car. “The younger consumer has grown up in the World Wide Web and the world of transparency, so they see it as a positive model that empowers shoppers.”
One of the main variables that affects a dealer’s ranking on CarGurus.ca, explains Welch, is reputation.
“How do your interactions with your existing customers yield positive reviews? That is a very important part of the evaluation process for consumers; and this is the case whether that customer is five km away or 200 km away,” she says. “Reputation is definitely one of the most important factors on our site.”
Another major point for dealers to consider is that a low price doesn’t necessarily mean a good deal. Welch says CarGurus has come to appreciate this point over the last decade, since Langley Steinert, former co-founder of TripAdvisor, launched the free website service in 2006. The Canadian site, CarGurus.ca, was launched in 2015.
“It’s really about offering a good value for your car: it’s the quality of the car, the conditions, having strong options,” says Welch. “It’s really pricing to be a strong value rather than a race to the bottom that consumers are looking for from a price perspective.”
The survey also found that 42 per cent of women, versus 33 per cent of men, consider gas prices to be a decisive factor when buying a car. Men feel that the time of year is the most significant factor to consider when purchasing a vehicle (46 per cent versus 38 per cent for women).
