December 8th, 2023, Lesley Simeon
Buying a new car - often considered a milestone in an individual’s life - involves a range of considerations. The car-buying journey could perhaps start from a basic online search for the most sought-after car models, chart a long winding road through factors like price, mileage and design, and end up at financing options to consider before the car is finally brought out of the showroom. But how helpful exactly, if at all, is word-of-mouth in this journey?
A recent YouGov survey asked consumers across 17 international markets how helpful word-of-mouth is when purchasing products across categories. Less than two in ten consumers (14%) say word-of-mouth helps them a great deal when buying cars/vehicles and less than a third of them (32%) say it helps them a fair amount.
Conversely, less than a quarter of consumers (22%) across all markets say word-of-mouth is not of much help and 11% of them say it doesn’t help them at all when buying cars/vehicles.
YouGov’s demographic data shows that men are more likely than women to find word-of-mouth helpful when buying cars/vehicles. Nearly half of all men (48%) say word-of-mouth is helpful to some degree when making purchases - 44% of women agree.
However, women and men (33% vs. 34%) are more or less in agreement about word-of-mouth either not being of much help or of any help at all in this regard.
Let’s now see how consumers across markets feel about word-of-mouth being of help or not, when buying cars/vehicles.
Word-of-mouth helps a great deal or a fair amount
Three in ten consumers in UAE (30%) say word-of-mouth helps them a great deal when buying cars/vehicles - the most likely across all our markets to say so. Mexicans (28%), Indonesians (25%), Hong Kongers (25%) and Indians (23%) follow. By comparison to Asians, Europeans are less likely to say the same.
Consumers in Sweden (6%) are the least likely across markets to say word-of-mouth helps them a great deal. Equal proportions of consumers in France, Italy, Denmark and Great Britain (7% each) say the same.
As for consumers who say word-of-mouth helps them a fair amount when making car/vehicle purchases, Indonesians lead (41%), closely followed by the Polish (40%) and the Spanish (38%). Consumers in the Nordic markets - less than a quarter in Sweden (22%) and Denmark (23%) - are the least likely to say so. Less than three in ten Americans (29%) agree that word-of-mouth helps them a fair amount.
Word-of-mouth doesn’t help very much or doesn’t help at all
Three in ten Australians (30%) say word-of-mouth doesn’t help them very much when it comes to purchasing cars/vehicles - the most likely across markets to say so. Conversely, Mexicans (11%) are the least likely to share this opinion.
Two in ten consumers in Singapore and India (20% each) say word-of-mouth is not of much help to them either - the most likely in Asia to have this opinion. In Europe, Denmark and Italy (28%) are the most likely to say word-of-mouth is not of much help to them when buying cars/vehicles.
Sweden accounts for the largest proportion of consumers (19%) who say word-of-mouth is of no help at all when buying cars/vehicles. Americans are among consumers (15%) who are more likely to have this opinion as well. On the other hand, just 3% of Hong Kongers feel word-of-mouth doesn’t help at all when it comes to buying vehicles.
Don’t know or I do not purchase this kind of product/service
Just a percent of consumers in Hong Kong (1%) say they don’t know if word-of-mouth is of any help them when purchasing cars/vehicles - most likely across all the markets we survey to say so. Poland (9%), Germany (9%) and Denmark (8%) account for the largest share of consumers who say the same.
As for consumers who say they don’t purchase cars/vehicles, over a third of those in Singapore (35%) say so.
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Methodology: YouGov Surveys: Serviced provide quick survey results from nationally representative or targeted audiences in multiple markets. The data is based on surveys of adults aged 18+ years in 17 markets with sample sizes varying between 508 and 2001 for each market. All surveys were conducted online in September 2023. 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 Surveys: Serviced.