Discover the Secrets of Used Car Shoppers With Big Data

The information gleaned from big data is one of the biggest advantages your dealership can have over competitors that are selling the same, or similar, models of used vehicles.

Big data is key to understanding what customers want before they walk on the lot. By tapping into millions of insights about supply and demand—something only possible with big data analytics—your dealership will know which features on those specific vehicles are most popular with consumers.

With this information fueling your merchandising, you can “load the lips” of your marketing/merchandising efforts—and those of your sales team—with the messages and features car buyers want to hear about. This enables your dealership to sell on value rather than just price.

Where does all the data come from? From consumers’ digital footprints. In the case of CarStory Market Reports, it’s consumer data gleaned from more than 350 used car marketplaces. Each month, we sort through data from more than 40 million vehicle searches and 7 million vehicle listings.

This data tells us how car shoppers are interacting with those vehicles online, which generates not only a comprehensive picture of the used car marketplace, but also a roadmap that can help your dealership understand how to market every used vehicle on your virtual/physical lot. Big data helps your dealership talk to consumers about the things they care about, and it helps consumers make smart shopping decisions.

Big data helps consumers shop in a way never before possible. Big data is influencing every industry (think of the quick and easy access to extensive data we have when shopping for a new home, for example), and is quickly becoming a powerful tool for both consumers and dealers in the used car buying process.

For example, big data is making it easier for used car shoppers to quickly and easily get market-wide analysis on things like wear and tear, pricing, and inventory availability. All this information can help consumers make decisions more quickly and help you sell cars faster.

Another way big data can help your dealership’s selling process is by telling you the most popular alternatives to a specific vehicle or feature, which enables you to recommend the best options to convert shoppers both on and off the lot. It’s like the Amazon experience on steroids.

These are just a few ways big data is impacting the car sales process. Big data is nothing to be afraid of—today’s digital tools enable quick analysis to push the most relevant and useful pieces of that data to your dealership and sales team.

Big data is here to stay, so, if you haven’t yet explored how it can help your dealership boost its used car sales, now’s the time.

Chad Bockius is the CMO of CarStory, the industry’s largest provider of search and inventory data and analytics on used vehicles. CarStory’s Market Reports are a free merchandising tool and lead source being used on over 3,000 independent and franchise dealer websites. Chad’s background includes both online marketing and automotive, having worked for companies such as Bazaarvoice, Socialware, and Trilogy. Chad is working to help dealers and OEMs tap into the power of big data to help build consumer confidence and accelerate decisions.