Amazon to start selling cars. Will consumers click?

Amazon to start selling cars. Will consumers click?

Clifton Mark - December 4th, 2023

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Amazon and Hyundai recently announced a new partnership. Starting in 2024, US consumers will be able to buy cars from Hyundai on Amazon and then pick them up or have them delivered by a local dealer. In many ways, this is the logical next step after the push to digital during the pandemic. But which consumers are ready to one-click a car? And how are they different from those who wouldn’t even consider it?

According to a recent survey conducted on YouGov Surveys: Self-serve, half of all Americans (50.3%) would not consider shopping for a vehicle on an e-commerce platform. A quarter (26.0%) say they would consider it, while another quarter (23.7%) are still not sure. Men (32.5%) are significantly more inclined to car shop on an e-commerce platform then women (21.0%).

A quarter of all consumers already represents a significant opportunity, but things look even better when we zoom in on Americans who are in the market for a car. A full third (33.3%) of those who are likely to buy a car in the next year would consider using a platform like Amazon.

Online shopping to avoid sales associates?

The survey also asked which features would determine where consumers buy their next car. Whether consumers would consider buying on Amazon or not, price is important to the greatest proportion of respondents (77.7%), followed by the ability to test drive a car in person (58.4%).

On many features, however, those who would consider Amazon diverge sharply from those who wouldn’t. Those who might buy online are, unsurprisingly, more interested in the key features of e-commerce: shopping from home and home delivery. The convenience of shopping from home is important to 40.5% of this group, more than twice as much as the national average (18.1%) and nearly six times more than those who would not consider buying from an e-commerce platform (7.0%). Home delivery is also more important to seven times as many potential online car-buyers (35.1%) as those who wouldn’t consider it (5.2%).

While price is essential to most potential online buyers (81.8%), they don’t want to haggle over it. Nearly a third of them (31.1%) say that avoiding price negotiations will be important in deciding where to buy a car. In fact, many don’t want to talk to sales associates at all. About a third (31.8%) say that “avoiding sales associate interactions,” twice the national average of 16.0%.

There is clearly a large segment of consumers that simply do not enjoy the traditional car-buying experience on offer at dealerships. Hyundai and Amazon’s new partnership is poised not only to give these customers what they want, such as home delivery, but also to help them avoid the most uncomfortable aspects of buying a car.

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Methodology: YouGov polled 570 US adults aged 18+ on November 28th, 2023. The survey was carried out through YouGov Surveys: Self-serve. Data is weighted by age, gender, race, political affiliation, education level and region. Learn more about YouGov Surveys: Self-serve.