Moods Bright During January Car Sales

The automotive landscape may look different as the calendar flips to February, but last month saw car steady car sales and buyers found it overwhelmingly easy to make their purchase. 

The monthly Ease of Purchase score that CDK has tracked for over two years was once again at its highest point with 92% of car buyers saying the process was easy. This is up from 88% in December and 84% last January. Driving this high score was the ability for customers to find the vehicle they hoped to purchase. Four out of five (80%) buyers said that was easy up from 72% in December and 68% last January. 

New car inventory is down slightly from last month but still hovering just below three million units. That also led to more buyers finding the car they wanted in stock compared to last month, 59% and 54% respectively, but has been as high as 62% in November. While buyers are also opting to order from the factory or in transit, far fewer are picking an alternate vehicle in stock. That number fell from 12% in December to just 7% in January. People are locked into the car they want and are less likely to opt for something else on the lot. 

And while the biggest change was to vehicle availability, nearly every other step in the process CDK tracks each month saw an uptick. Whether it was taking a test drive, delivery or even difficult financial dealings like agreeing on trade-in value and the final price of the car, more buyers said they were easy compared to last month or last year.

More buyers also said they started their purchase process online and then finished at the dealers rising to 22% of dealership customers from 17% last month. But last year this number was far higher at 29% as more people had to buy in transit and factory ordered vehicles than today.

Here’s one buyer’s breakdown of the multi-channel approach: “They were easy to communicate and met me where I was in the process. [They] went above and beyond to get the deal complete, like providing me an OTD[out the door] price by text and allowing me to do applications online.”

There was also virtually no change in the number of stores visited month over month. Nearly half (47%) only visited one store, nearly the same as last month (48%). Last year this number was far lower (29%) because of lower inventory levels.

One clearly negative number in the CDK data shows that people spent more time than they expected at the dealership to complete the purchase. Nearly one in three (32%) said they spent more than they expected, up from 24% last month. The number who said they spent less time than they expected changed even more dramatically from 29% last month to just 16% in January.

It seems that because dealers made the process easier overall, customers were more understanding of the time it took to get out the door with their new car. 

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