CHICAGO, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Millions of
consumers spend time on Cars.com (NYSE:CARS) each month to shop,
research and validate automotive purchase decisions. Today, the
company debuted its Cars.com 2017 Year in Review list, which was
compiled by mining and analyzing the site's deep well of real-time
behavioral data to determine how consumer car-shopping patterns are
affected by current events, pop culture news and other key moments
in time from the past year. The data-driven insights reveal clear
connections between how seemingly unrelated offline events drive
online actions.
Here is the list:
1. 2017 was a huge year for new model launches,
but Americans can't get enough of their pickup trucks.
The top three shopped vehicles of 2017 were the:
- Ford F-Series
- Chevrolet Silverado
- Ram pickups
2. As millions of women marched across the
country on Jan. 21, car shopping
stalled – signaling the shift in car-purchasing power to
women.
More than 60 percent of women are the
sole decision makers when they go car shopping.¹ Not
surprisingly, on the day of the Women's March, shopper activity was
down 8.4 percent.
3. Football fans put down their wings during the
Big Game to shop for cars.
On Feb. 5, New England
outshopped Atlanta with 12.3
percent more new-vehicle shopper traffic.
4. Cuffing season ends with an uptick in car
shopping, but Halloween frightens shoppers away.
The
busiest car-shopping day of 2017 was Feb.
26, while the slowest car-shopping day of the year was
Oct. 31.
5. The country's top cities for St. Patrick's Day celebrations suffered from a
major car-shopping hangover. Kansas
City seems to have celebrated a little too
hard.
Nationally, new-vehicle shopper activity was down
on St. Patrick's Day, but it was
still down the day after St.
Patrick's Day celebrations in some of the country's top
cities:
- Kansas City: -21.3
percent
- Nashville: -13.2
percent
- Cleveland: -5.5
percent
- Boston: -5.1
percent
- Chicago: -3.7
percent
- Buffalo: -2.4 percent
- Raleigh: -1.4
percent
- Louisville: 0.8
percent
- Pittsburgh: 1.8
percent
- Philadelphia: 6.6
percent
6. It's no surprise that Angelenos clocked the
most searches for eco-friendly vehicles on Earth Day, but
Chicagoans were feeling extra green this year, coming in
second.
The top five U.S. markets that searched for
eco-friendly vehicles on Earth Day 2017 were:
- Los Angeles
- Chicago
- Washington, D.C.
- San Francisco Bay
Area
- New York City
7. American consumers went dark during the 2017
total solar eclipse as eyes were to the sky from coast to coast …
except for those shopping the out-of-production Mitsubishi
Eclipse.
During the roughly 90 minutes (11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Central) it took for the
eclipse to travel the 2,600 miles across the continent, page views
were down 15 percent week over week. There was, however, a 62
percent uptick in searches for used Mitsubishi Eclipses and
an 11 percent increase on new Mitsubishi-brand vehicle
searches.
8. Like everything else, car shopping has gone
mobile, and Louisiana and
New Jersey top the list of highest
mobile shopper activity for new and used vehicles,
respectively.
In 2017, 65 percent of new-vehicle
shopper activity and 51 percent of used-vehicle shopper activity
came from a mobile device. The top five states with the highest
new-vehicle mobile shopper activity were:
- Louisiana
- Hawaii
- Nevada
- Mississippi
- Texas
The top five states with the highest used-vehicle mobile
shopper activity were:
- New Jersey
- Illinois
- Texas
- New York
- Virginia
9. Hurricane Harvey interrupted auto sales for
several days before Houston
shoppers returned to dealerships to replace waterlogged vehicles
and spur a more than 100 percent increase in share of new-vehicle
sales in the first 20 days of September.
Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Houston on Aug.
25. Houston's share of
national new-vehicle sales were up more than 100 percent in the
first 20 days of September versus July (the month before the
storm).
10. Consumers spent nearly 2 billion minutes
shopping on Cars.com properties in 2017.²
This is
the equivalent of 33 million hours … or 1.4 million days … or
nearly 45,600 months … or more than 3,800 years. In that time, you
could travel to Mars and back about 2,850 times.³
11. Americans weren't exactly creative with
vehicle color choices of 2017.
The most popular car
colors of the year were black (No. 1) and white (No. 2). The least
popular car color was pink.
12. Ford dominated car-shopper attention in 2017,
followed closely by:
- Chevrolet
- Toyota
- Jeep
- Honda
- Dodge
- Mercedes-Benz
- Nissan
- BMW
- GMC
Methodology
The top moments identified in Cars.com's
2017 Year in Review were measured by analyzing impressions of new-
and used-vehicle inventory pages, page views and searches on the
site between Jan. 1 and Nov. 27,
2017, to get to total new- or used-vehicle shopper activity.
The aggregated data was analyzed, ranked and segmented by major
markets, states, makes or models, depending on the key moment. The
time spent car shopping on Cars.com properties was calculated using
data from comScore Media Matrix Multi-Platform from Jan. to
Oct. 2017.
About Cars.com
Cars.com™ is a leading two-sided
digital automotive marketplace that creates meaningful connections
between buyers and sellers. Launched in 1998 and headquartered in
Chicago, the company empowers
consumers with resources and information to make informed buying
decisions around The 4Ps of Automotive MarketingTM:
Product, Price, Place and Person, by connecting advertising
partners with in-market car shoppers and providing data-driven
intelligence to increase inventory turn and gain market share. A
pioneer in online automotive classifieds, the company has evolved
into one of the largest digital automotive platforms, connecting
thousands of local dealers across the country with millions of
consumers. Through trusted expert content, on-the-lot mobile
features and intelligence, millions of new and used vehicle
listings, a comprehensive set of pricing and research tools, and
the largest database of consumer reviews in the industry, Cars.com
is transforming the car shopping experience.
Cars.com properties include DealerRater®, Auto.com™,
PickupTrucks.com® and NewCars.com®. For more information,
visit www.Cars.com.
¹ Cars.com Female Consumer Metrics Survey,
July 2016
² comScore
Media Matrix Multi-Platform Jan.-Oct.
2017
³ NASA,
https://www.nasa.gov/offices/marsplanning/faqs/, Nov. 2017
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SOURCE Cars.com, Inc.