Global: What role do social media reviews have in buying a car?
Auto brands are already well entrenched on social media – Tesla, for example, has almost 20m Twitter followers - while popular YouTubers like ChrisFix and Doug DeMuro count subscription bases of up to 10m. But what role do reviews on platforms like YouTube and TikTok play in the car-buying process?
In a recent YouGov survey conducted across 17 global markets, we asked consumers which kinds of products/ services whether they check social media before purchasing certain categories of goods or services. Mobile phones (45%) and other technology products like TVs (43%) register the highest share of consumers who lean on social media reviews to make a purchase decision. Reviews also play an important role for hotels, which trails mobiles closely at 43%. Checking social media reviews before purchasing a car shows up lower, but still around a third of consumers (31%) say they do it.
Of all the 17 markets studied in this survey, consumers in China are the most reliant on social media reviews before purchasing a car (46%). Indonesians are a slightly behind at 42%. Consumers in other Asian markets are not as likely to say they check social media reviews for cars before purchasing. Urban Indians (33%) outpace global respondents (31%) when it comes to checking social media reviews. However, consumers in Hong Kong (24%) and Singapore (21%) are the least likely among Asian markets to pick cars as a product for which they check these reviews.
Consumers in the European region don’t think alike. While a few countries outpace the global audience – Poland (42%), Italy (36%), Spain (33%) and Sweden (32%) – in the other half less than a third of consumers say they check social media for car reviews before purchasing. Less than a quarter of consumers in Great Britain (23%) say they rely on social media, the least of all European markets.
Americans and Britons indicate similar social media habits, with 23% of Americans also saying they check social media reviews before deciding which car to purchase, far below their neighbours up north – Canada (35%).
Consumers in the UAE are only slightly more likely than global respondents to say they check social media reviews before buying a car (32%).
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Methodology: YouGov RealTime Omnibus provides quick survey results from nationally representative or targeted audiences in multiple markets. The data is based on surveys of adults aged 18 and over in 18 markets with sample sizes varying between 514 and 2011 for each market. All surveys were conducted online in November 2022. Data from each market uses a nationally representative sample apart from Mexico and India, which use urban representative samples, and Indonesia and Hong Kong, which use online representative samples. Learn more about YouGov RealTime Omnibus.
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