8:13 am, March 22, 2023
The proportion of car buyers looking to purchase their next vehicle using an online-only sales journey has shrunk drastically in recent months, a new study has shown.
Research collected by consumer champion What Car? found that just 4.2 per cent of in market buyers are planning to buy a car without any physical element to their sales experience.
The number has declined by more than 130 per cent since June of last year, when the figure stood at 9.7 per cent.
The most recent poll gathered the views of 873 in-market buyers, with less than half (41.1 per cent) saying they were comfortable with the idea of buying a car online, in theory.
This is also down from June 2022, when 49.9 per cent of buyers said they were comfortable with it.
Meanwhile, less than a quarter (22.5 per cent) felt they could get a better deal online compared with visiting a dealer. A further 33.4 per cent of respondents felt the opposite was true and expected to get a better price from a physical dealer.
What Car? editor Steve Huntingford said: ‘Despite the growing presence of online-only retailers and a push from manufacturers towards online buying, the share of people set to buy their next car online has fallen over the past nine months.
‘What is particularly striking is the disparity between the number of people who say they are comfortable with the idea of buying a car online and the number of buyers actually planning to do so.
‘This suggests manufacturers have a lot of work to do in convincing buyers that they’d be better off buying online.’
Online car sales was one of the biggest topics up for discussion at our recent Car Dealer Live conference, held in Gaydon.
Cox Automotive presented a special white paper on omnichannel retailing and the benefits is can have for dealers.
Meanwhile, a panel of independent dealers slammed online disruptors like Cazoo for being ‘naive’ and arrogant’.
