In-Market Shopping Trends - 2008 Year-End Review
Taking a Look Back
Well, we made it. We’re now fast into 2009, having survived a whirlwind of a year for our industry in 2008. How many times did we find ourselves anxiously awaiting news, good or bad, that would determine the fate of our futures (at least in the short-term) both professionally and personally? From the volatile gas prices to the crises in our financial markets and domestic auto industry, and a presidential election that the whole world was consumed with, this was a year that caused a great deal of reflection as it came to a close.
Though we know how the year netted out with vehicle sales, we will look at the full year view of industry sales, online shopping trends and leads to see the correlation among how consumers are researching online and what the results are in the ultimate measurement, vehicle sales.
Table 1.1 Vehicle Sales and Jumpstart Automotive Media Traffic Trends
Interesting to note in Table 1.1 above is that May saw the highest vehicle sales out of any month of the year, which is also when gas prices were on a rapid rise. By mid-summer gas prices peaked at over $4.00 per gallon, but started to slowly come down during the month of August. Consumers were actively researching vehicles online during these months, engaging heavily with compact and alternative fuels/ technology content. Sales recovered slightly in August when manufacturer incentives, especially on SUVs and trucks were ranging from $1,000 - $4,000, but unfortunately continued to decline to record-lows in over a decade.
The housing market collapse over the year, and credit crisis during the fourth quarter put a halt on lending to consumers and dealers alike, and the domestic manufacturers reached the end of their cash. Their fate would be determined by the government who they had approached for loans to avoid bankruptcy. The words cutbacks, recession, and restructuring were common vernacular and consumer confidence plummeted to the ground.
In Table 1.2 we look at how sales and leads in the industry correlate to one another. We see the spike in leads during the same month that sales peaked for the year, and we also see them decline as the market became much more unstable for Americans.
Table 1.2 Vehicle Sales and Jumpstart Automotive Media Leads
So What Other Trends Did We See?
For the first time in over a decade, Cars out-sold Trucks in 2008. From the online shopping trends depicted below, we can see that Sedan shoppers ruled the audience, with Compact and SUV shoppers hovering near 15% of our audience for most of the year. Though we can see a slight increase in hybrid car shoppers from May through July, the overall impact of the rise in gas prices doesn’t appear to have had lasting effects after the prices started to drop. Conversely, we see that SUV and Truck segments show slight increases during the fourth quarter when gas prices fell back down below $2.00.
Table 2.1 Share of Jumpstart Shoppers by Vehicle Segment
Mimicking the vehicle segment trends, brand and model shoppers (Tables 2.2, 2.3, 2.4) showed favorability towards sedans and compact vehicles manufactured by Chevrolet, Ford, Toyota and Honda. All of these brands were also among the highest share of leads that were submitted across Jumpstart publisher websites.
Model leads were highest among the Honda Fit, Toyota Prius, Ford Escape, Honda CR-V and Mazda 3. In the SUV category, only three nameplates made it into the top leads, Ford Escape, Honda CR-V and Honda Pilot.
Table 2.2 Share of Jumpstart Shoppers by Brand
Table 2.3 Share of Jumpstart Leads by Brand
Table 2.4 Share of Jumpstart Leads by Model
Moving Forward
We made it into the New Year still standing, but what lies ahead for the industry? Will consumers re-gain enough confidence to commit to a new vehicle purchase? The fears that we ended the year with still exist, but how can marketers help to ease concerns and bring products to consumers that are in demand?
As we consider this, an interesting new opportunity comes to mind. Most of us in the industry have recently read about or seen advertising for the Hyundai Assurance program that aims to ease these fears that consumers have regarding the market, their employment status, and even their health. The South Korean manufacturer is offering consumers the peace of mind that they can return their financed or leased vehicle within the first year if they are unable to make a car payment due to misfortune such as unemployment or health reasons that would cause them to be disabled or lose their license.
This is a great example of bringing a solution that could benefit both parties. Hyundai, who just received 2009 Car of the Year award for the Genesis, is looking to sell more vehicles and gain market share at a time when consumers are in need of flexibility due to the state of our economy, while still needing the utility of a vehicle. We’ve begun to track what impact this new innovative incentive will have on Hyundai’s traffic, leads and vehicle sales. Though this offer is new, table 3.1 below shows a snapshot of early January traffic for Hyundai, and the increase in their Unique Users and Pageviews since the start of January when this new incentive was released.
Table 3.1 5-Week Snapshot of Hyundai Pageviews and Unique Users
During difficult economic times, some players will fold while others will prevail while becoming stronger and smarter at what they do. There are still hurdles that we’ve yet to encounter, but the hope is that we’ll have the ability to think more strategically as we look ahead in anticipation of better results at the end of 2009 for both marketers and consumers.
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