4:58 pm, January 17, 2023
Nearly half of all car buyers expect to buy their next vehicle from a physical franchised car dealership.
A survey of 1,500 in market car buyers by What Car? – carried out exclusively for Car Dealer – found that 46.7 per cent expected to buy from a franchised dealer.
In stark contrast, just 6.3 per cent said they planned to buy their next car online.
While the majority (72.7 per cent) liked buying from a car dealer – the rest weren’t so keen (27.3 per cent) – and these buyers were also asked what they hated the most about the experience.
What Car? discovered that the biggest bug bear consumers had with car dealerships was the ‘pushy sales staff’, followed closely by an assumption that they would not be able to negotiate a deal.
Sales staff not being able to answer car buyers’ questions was the third biggest dislike and a lack of stock was fourth.
Top 10 things buyers dislike about car dealers
Source: What Car?
- Pushy sales staff – 24.2 per cent
- Not able to negotiate on a deal – 20.3 per cent
- Sales staff not able to answer my questions – 14 per cent
- Not having enough vehicles I’m interested in – 10 per cent
- Premises being a long distance away – 8.6 per cent
- Sales staff not being respectful – 7.4 per cent
- Not being offered a test drive – 6 per cent
- Not picking up calls when I contact them – 5.3 per cent
- Premises not being clean or otherwise unwelcoming – 2.9 per cent
- Inconvenient opening hours – 1.3 per cent
Some 72 per cent of respondents had at some stage had a poor experience with a car dealership that had put them off visiting that showroom again.
What Car? also asked the consumers where they thought they could get the best deal – in the showroom or online.
The majority (46 per cent) thought a face-to-face deal would elicit the best price while 23 per cent thought online sales would give them a better price.
Where do you expect to buy your next car?
Source: What Car?
- Franchised car dealer – 46.7 per cent
- Online – 6.3 per cent
- Independent car dealer – 5.8 per cent
- Private seller – 1.4 per cent
- I don’t know – 39.8 per cent
Jim Holder, editorial director of What Car? said: ‘The survey reveals once again that car buyers like to deal with people face-to-face – and that going to a franchised dealer gives them reassurance that they will have the best possible chance of good service.
‘While that sounds obvious, there has been so much noise around online and omni-channel sales that it’s sometimes easy to forget that today’s predominant model hasn’t ended up where it is by luck, but rather because it gives most people what they want most of the time.
‘It’s interesting, too, that consumers like a deal. That goes against a lot of surveys – and a lot of justifications for the agency model, which conspicuously to date offers a lot of potential advantages, but few practical ones for the consumer.’
Holder said there are also a few things for dealers to be wary of in the survey results, too.
He added: ‘Pushy, disrespectful and unknowledgeable sales staff remain a menace. Fixing those things won’t be easy, or perhaps even possible given the large numbers and high turnover of people in the industry, but it has to also improve.’
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