How rapid shifts in consumer behaviour could present new opportunities for retailers

In my last blog post, I talked about how COVID-19 is affecting pricing, and whether that might affect retailer strategies. Based on your feedback and questions from our weekly webinars, this time I’m looking at shifts in consumer behaviour and the opportunities that might arise for retailers as a result.

First of all, its important to look at audience. Encouragingly, our audience numbers now appear to have stabilised, with traffic to Auto Trader remaining fairly flat at around 29% down vs usual. Whilst over Easter weekend, around 840,000 users visited Auto Trader daily, so there are definitely some positive signs of increasing activity.

Lead trends

One of the most common questions from last weeks’ webinar was “what trends are we seeing with leads”? Well, call volumes are down 70-80% vs the same time last year, which is no surprise given the fact that UK consumers know that dealerships are closed. But, whilst calls are down 70-80%, overall leads are only down 20-25%. What that means is that we’re seeing a behavioural shift in the ways consumers are choosing to interact with retailers – methods such as live chat and text are becoming much more widespread. Over 6,000 retailers now include these tools in their Auto Trader adverts. If you’ve not activated them yet, I’d strongly recommend them as a way to help you connect with potential customers. In addition, ‘saved’ vehicles are becoming a greater signal of interest – people still need vehicles, they’re just ‘saving’ them for later. 

Uncertainty brings opportunity

Another point I’d like to reinforce, is that its ok to be worried – we’re only human – but consumers are only human too. There’s a lot of uncertainty out there. But uncertainty brings with it: opportunity. Which is why it’s so important you’re ready to hit the ground running when we emerge from this pandemic. If we look at other markets, Wuhan for example, the epicentre of the outbreak (and for the record I think this also needs to be viewed with some level of scrutiny) has widely reported good news of consumer spend bouncing back quickly, including within the automotive industry.

A rise in ‘transport distancing’

Encouragingly, looking at our own research and data backs this up. The majority of buyers who were in-market before this outbreak are still in-market, they’re just waiting for when its safe to buy, which will create pent up demand. In addition to that, there are opportunities for new buyers to come into market. Usage of public transport has declined massively as people have followed lockdown procedures. Once lockdown is lifted though, I doubt many people will be rushing back to crowded public transport. And consequently, I believe will lead to at least a short-term rise in ‘transport distancing’ whereby people continue to avoid public transport. Again, this presents an opportunity for retailers if people are avoiding public transport and begin looking for vehicles instead.

Deeper insight into consumer attitudes

As I mentioned in the webinar, our friends at Trader Canada conducted a survey, which showed that 70% of those who previously used ride sharing services such as Uber don’t plan to use these services again after lockdown is lifted. A further 40% don’t plan on using public transport. And even more interestingly, 14% who don’t currently own a car are now planning to purchase one. Of those 14%, they’re 4x more likely to prefer to own a car than use lift sharing services, and 62% see it as more desirable to own a car than use public transport. So, there will be opportunities, we just need to be ready for them. We’ve got our own piece of research currently in-field to understand how UK consumers attitudes towards automotive purchases have changed – to get a better view of the opportunities for UK retailers here and now. We’ll be sharing these findings with you in next weeks webinar, which you can sign up for here.

You’ve got access to insights at your fingertips

One really important thing I’d like to finish with, is that you don’t need to wait for us to reveal these insights. We’ve effectively given you the keys to our data by releasing a new product to you called Market Insight, which is now available to you in Portal. You can analyse trends for different fuel types, makes, models and you can cut it regionally, nationally and other ways – all to help you identify opportunities earlier, so that you can act based on insight, rather than going it alone with gut instinct. To access it, simply log in to Portal and click ‘Analytics’.