In-Market Shopping Trends - Auto Industry Off to a Slow Start in 2009
After reviewing our 2008 analytics and recognizing that automotive in-market shopping mirrored the same trends as vehicle sales even in a down market, we were expecting to see similar data in January…that is, until we saw our traffic spike. No matter how hopeful we were of seeing new growth in vehicle sales and consumer confidence, we knew it was too good to be true that sales trends would follow the climb of our January traffic.
Table 1.1 below shows Jumpstart’s spike of 33% in Unique Users while industry sales reported a 27% decrease from December, 2008 to January, 2009. During this month total Pageviews on Jumpstart’s sites also grew by 45%.
Table 1.1 Industry Sales and Jumpstart Traffic
The unique users depicted above reflect Jumpstart’s internal analytics, but similar results were also reported in comScore MediaMetrix for January traffic. According to comScore, Jumpstart traffic grew approximately 30% from December, 2008 to January, 2009 with nearly 7 million unique visitors; ranking highest in terms of Unique Visitors across competitive automotive research websites. In total, the Automotive Resources category only grew 2% over the same period of time.
Our audience growth in January is spread across 8 of Jumpstart’s 11 exclusive partners who recognized growth in Unique Users ranging anywhere from 2% to 104%. North American International Auto Show news and content accounted for a large amount of traffic, while recent vehicle awards such as the North American Car of the Year and Car and Driver’s 10 Best Cars also received higher than average traffic. The top brands on Jumpstart sites (measured by unique users) shifted quite significantly with Volkswagen climbing to the top for the first time ever. The GTI, which recently received Car and Driver’s 10 Best award drove the brand’s share of shopping up more than 200% from its January levels. Ford moved ahead of Chevy for the second consecutive month in share of shoppers on Jumpstart sites and is also ahead of them in share of industry sales.
Table 1.2 Top Brands on Jumpstart Sites — Share of Industry Sales vs. Share of Jumpstart Shoppers January, 2009
After watching the downfall of the domestic brands over the course of 2008, especially in the fourth quarter, it comes as no surprise to see all three domestic brands lose market share ranging from 5% to 30% from January, 2008 to January, 2009. The drop in domestic share has allowed some of the import brands, both large and small, to gain traction in the US auto market. Of the bigger players, Toyota, Honda and Nissan gained share ranging from 8% to 14%, while the smaller manufacturers such as Hyundai and Kia saw much larger increases of 62% to 76% from year-ago levels.
Table 1.3 Change in Market Share — January, 2008 — January, 2009
Hyundai Update — Did their January efforts pay off?
Hyundai is a brand that we’re watching particularly closely, as they entered the year taking a strategic approach to their marketing efforts, especially as it relates to vehicle financing in our existing economy. In last month’s issue of Fuel we briefly covered weekly traffic increases for Hyundai as they won the Car of the Year award at the North American International Auto Show and released the Hyundai Assurance program (shown in Table 2.1 below). This month we take a deeper dive into the results of their efforts.
Table 2.1 Hyundai Weekly Traffic upon Car of the Year Award and Hyundai Assurance Program
We can see from the table above that Hyundai recognized weekly traffic increases following the release of their Assurance Program and the award for Car of the Year for the Genesis. Table 2.2 below provides a daily view of traffic for the rest of the month and includes the spike in Hyundai’s third success for the month, their investment in the Super Bowl.
Table 2.2 Hyundai Daily Traffic Changes in January — Unique Users and Pageviews
During a weakened economy and a struggling auto industry, many marketers pulled their advertising support of the Super Bowl, which is known for the most expensive and creative commercials that air in the US. Hyundai chose to increase their investment by purchasing 3 pre-game:30 second spots and 2 in-game:30 second spots. Whether or not this investment paid off, we can only speculate based on the data we saw from our site analytics and perhaps later from industry sales reports over the first quarter of the year.
Looking at Table 2.3 below, we compare Hyundai’s increase in traffic on February 1st and 2nd (shaded boxes) to key competitor brands, Toyota, Honda and Nissan. Second, we look at each brands’ overall share of shoppers on Jumpstart sites on those two days (% above the boxes) and we evaluate those increases.
Table 2.3 Traffic Change from Feb. 1 to Feb. 2 (Super Bowl & Following Day) and Impact on Share of Shoppers
The increase in Hyundai’s share of shoppers from Super Bowl Sunday to the following day was 15%, while competitors (some who also advertised in the Super Bowl) saw increases of up to 5%. It was also reported by TNS Compete that Hyundaiusa.com saw increases in traffic of 78% on Super Bowl Sunday. In addition to an increase in traffic, Hyundai was one of two OEMs to report positive sales from December, 2008 to January, 2009. Though it is still early in 2009, when we consider our economic climate and the auto industry specifically, it appears that Hyundai is off to a good start.
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