Car buyer satisfaction loses progress, down to pre-pandemic levels says Cox Auto

A new Cox Automotive report has revealed that car buyer satisfaction continued to decline in 2022, despite industry efforts to provide better service in the wake of economic headwinds.

Cox’s analysts based their conclusions on survey answers from over 10,000 participants, all of whom sought to buy a car in 2022. The responses revealed that car buyer satisfaction had dropped to 61%, a 5% decrease from 2021. Noting that this number closely matches statistics from before the COVID outbreak, the researchers cited increases to shopping time, vehicle scarcity and price tags as the primary culprits for this slide.

Car buyer satisfaction numbers are helpful for dealerships who are looking to up their game  in the new year. However, the three issues mentioned in the Cox report are factors largely out of store owners’ control. Unless a miracle occurs in 2023, retailers will need to adapt if they want to avoid further antagonization of vehicle shoppers and bring them back into the market.

Thankfully, as the researchers at Cox note, there are strategies which show promise for improving car buyers satisfaction. The numbers show that 87% of dealers and 81% of consumers believe that e-commerce improved the shopping journey. Although auto-retail has been slow to adopt digital sales solutions, it could be an answer to the disillusionment of American consumers.

That being said, dealerships have been hard at work integrating better equipment and strategies into their operations. What’s more, entrepreneurs have grown increasingly interested in improving the vehicle shopping experience, creating enterprises which promise to change the market landscape. While the decrease to car buyer satisfaction is hardly good news, the resilience of auto-retail, and its ability to adapt, has been proven ten times over, and a solution is almost certain to be found.

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