Key Takeaways

Sources: Dig Insights, Vehicle Path to Purchase Research Study, August 2024, (n=1,229). * Comscore My Metrix® | Key Measures, Multi-Platform, Total Minutes, August 2024, Canada. | Automotive Resources Share of Minutes., May 2024, (n=325).

Car Shopper Profiling Benefits

Components of a Fulsome Car Shopper Profile

1. Contact Details

Capture multiple modes of contact, such as a phone number and email address, to ensure you are in a position to establish a line of communication with every prospective car buyer.

2. Demographics

This includes details such as age, household income (HHI), occupation, location, and marital status. Gaining a better understanding of demographics can help you tailor your sales approach and alternate vehicle recommendations. For example, a retired couple that reside in a rural area wouldn’t necessarily need the same car as parents with three kids driving back and forth between the workplace, school and various activities.

3. Shopping Behaviours & Interests 

Tracking online behaviour of prospective car buyers provides valuable insight into their interests, preferences and purchase patterns.

4. Stage in Car Shopping Journey  

Collect and catalogue a variety of important data points, including source, frequently visited pages, average visit duration, actions taken, and number of leads submitted to gain a more profound understanding of the stage of the shopping journey for every lead.

5. Lead Score  

Lead Scoring involves assessing the sales readiness of every lead your dealership receives through a predetermined methodology, enabling you to rank them and settle on a follow-up strategy.

Progressive Profiling

What is Progressive Profiling?

Progressive profiling is the process of obtaining car shopper information that is willingly provided, over time, enabling you to build even more detailed shopper profiles. Unlike traditional techniques of gathering consumer data, which often require extensive forms and questionnaires, delivered upfront, progressive profiling breaks down the data collection process into smaller, manageable pieces, spread across multiple interactions through the sales process.

Progressive Profiling Benefits

1. Increased Consumer Trust  

Progressive profiling ensures consumers are aware of and consent to data collection, giving them control over the information they provide. This level of transparency tactfully builds consumer trust and confidence in your dealership.

2. Up-to-Date Consumer Data

As the data is collected directly through correspondences with the consumer, over time, it becomes increasingly more accurate and reflective of the unique preferences of the car shopper.

3. Increased Conversion Rates

The more you know about your leads, the better you can personalize their shopping experience. We know that 40% of car shoppers prioritize a fair price and a great consumer experience ¹ – all the more reason to level up your game to gain a more profound understanding of the unique traits of your prospects.

How to integrate progressive profiling into your business

Progressive profiling can be activated through embedded cookies on your dealership website to track and collect consumer behaviour and interactions. By assigning a unique cookie to each website user, in situations where they offer their details on one page, you can automate the process and streamline the user experience so that their information automatically populates across subsequent forms and interactions.

Car Shopper Profiling Solutions 

Enriched Lead

What is an Enriched Lead? 

An Enriched Lead contains additional rich information, such as demographic details, behavioural insights, top viewed vehicle, time on marketplace, purchase history, and other relevant data, based on each consumer’s interactions on gotrader.ca. These data points provide a more comprehensive understanding of each lead’s preferences and likelihood of conversion, enabling more effective communication.

The Anatomy of an Enriched Lead

Gaining a more profound understanding of each car shopper’s journey can drive business growth. Integrating these valuable insights seamlessly into your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) facilitates easy access to vital prospective customer information, enhancing lead details and empowering your team to make more informed decisions. Overall, this approach can help you engage more effectively with your prospects and boost your sales performance.

How To Leverage Each Component of Enriched Lead Data on gotrader.ca

AutoTrader’s Enriched Lead offering provides valuable data to personalize interactions, optimize communication efforts and ramp up your dealership’s close rate. Dealership sales personnel are encouraged to leverage the sophistication of Enriched Lead to guide the buyer down the path to closing a deal for a vehicle available through your store.

Consumer Insights

What is Consumer Insights ?  

Consumer Insights is an industry-first tool that allows you to zoom into each lead record for a detailed view into the specifics of their car shopping journey. By leveraging AutoTrader’s Consumer Insights, your Sales team can optimize their efficiency while gaining an instant boost in confidence when approaching each selling scenario.

Anatomy of Consumer Insights

The Leads Summary table offers a sortable overview of all leads from inventory listings on gotrader.ca. Selecting ‘View Insights’ puts you in the driver’s seat to deep dive each car shopper profile, gaining instant insight into interests and search activity. The Consumer Profile details preferences, such as top viewed vehicles, new or used preference, days online, and total leads submitted, along with top viewed models and price distribution. Use the dropdown menu to toggle between dealership specific data or ‘All Dealerships’ for a holistic view across gotrader.ca inventory.

Identifying Patterns in Lead Data

With AutoTrader’s attribution service, your dealership can gain instant visibility into an assortment of data points such as source, frequently visited pages, average visit duration, actions taken, and even device used. Through this data, you can identify patterns and create a defined digital journey to optimize your dealership website experience and understand the channels that drive the most traffic, engagement and conversion.

In alignment with our commitment of influencing the most vehicle sales for our dealer partners across Canada, we partnered with Clarivoy, a leader in identity-based targeting and measurement for dealership marketers. The findings reveal that GoTrader prompted 60% of vehicle sales, while other channels, including Google paid ads, contributed to a mere 6% of closed deals.² This data underscores how gotrader.ca and dealership websites complement each other, driving optimal performance and results.

Deal Builder

What is Deal Builder?

gotrader.ca’s Deal Builder is a fundamental feature that empowers car shoppers to progress through more phases of the car buying journey online, while simultaneously offering streamlined lead enrichment for dealer partners. In simple terms, a Deal Builder lead provides access to ready-to-buy car shoppers, as, when more aspects of the vehicle purchase process unfold online – for instance, checking vehicle availability, booking an appointment, obtaining a trade-in valuation, all through a focused shopping experience – the follow through to a vehicle purchase is much higher.

Car Shopper Profile Segmentation 

Car shopper profile segmentation is used to organize leads based on commonalities in the comprehensive customer profiles you build for each prospective buyer. By analyzing the profiling information gathered from your consumers, you can bucket them into distinct segments or groups with shared characteristics, preferences, and behaviours.

With lead segmentation you can target groups of users based on the information they’ve provided to you, enhancing the effectiveness of your communication and pitching strategies, while casting as wide of a net as possible.

When effectively deployed within any dealership operation, car shopper profiling not only positively influences customer satisfaction and measures of loyalty, but also enhances the efficiency of marketing and advertising campaigns. Our Enhanced Car Shopper Profiling best practice guide offers insight into crafting fulsome car shopper profiles to help you create personalized experiences for every one of your prospects, driving success in the competitive automotive landscape

Sources: (1) Dig Insights, Vehicle Path to Purchase, July 2022, (n=1,369). (2) Source: Clarivoy Advertising Channel Study, 2022-2023. n=2200 (3) 2024 Case Study, gotrader.ca and Dealertrack Data Warehouse. Note: * Average close ratio impact for dealerships using complete MotoCommerce Digital Retailing platform.  

While car purchase intent has maintained its course, with about one-quarter of Canadians planning to buy a vehicle in the next six months, our latest consumer research revealed that confidence in personal finances made a notable improvement, with 53% of vehicle intenders anticipating to see their household financial situation improve either “a little” or “a lot” in the next six months. That’s up from 43% in the previous study. With these strong indicators of purchase intention and financial confidence, dealers who understand how and where consumers shop, and who then tailor their online experience to those preferences, will have an advantage.  

Also unchanged is the percentage of respondents who have previously planned to buy a vehicle but then determined to delay their purchase. The primary reason for delay is the belief that their current vehicle is still in good running condition (52%). Second is high vehicle prices at 31%; and tied for third is affordability, and re-prioritization of spending due to inflation or the increase in cost of living, both at 25%. Most notably, there was a slight drop in people who said high interest rates prevented them from purchasing at 18%, down from 22% earlier this year.   

What about those who don’t want to wait? The study found that 47% of vehicle intenders feel “now” is a good time to make a major purchase, including a vehicle, and while only 31% feel the current economic situation “good” or “very good” overall, when it comes to confidence in their current personal financial situation, 59% state it was “good” or “very good.”  

Online resources remain the number-one source of vehicle information, and by a vast margin over in-person dealership visits or asking family or friends. One of the top sources that consumers look to are online automotive marketplaces (38%), such as gotrader.ca. Those looking for new vehicles use an average of 3.6 sources, while used vehicle intenders – 52% of whom turn to an online automotive marketplace – tap into 3.8 sources, on average. Putting vehicles in front of these car shoppers, where they are – online – is a key formula to success. 

What they’re looking for online is also important to help you tailor the process and provide the experience they want. A whopping 86% of shoppers are interested in completing certain aspects of their purchase process online, and 64% want to buy a vehicle fully online. That’s remained rather stable from the previous study. 

The current research showed the tasks that most shoppers want to do online are to research and compare vehicles (92%), and to inquire about a vehicle that interests them (92%). Unsurprisingly, those two undertakings haven’t changed positions for several studies. The keys to reaching these shoppers include a wide variety of vehicles on your lot, keywords that prioritize vehicles presented to them by model, segment, brand, or price, depending on what the shopper has indicated, complete information that’s easy to find, including vehicle comparisons, and finally,  promptly responding to their inquiries, and with information about the vehicle that’s already been shortlisted by the shopper. If you’re looking to improve your merchandising, or understand if it’s up to par, check out this guide to effective online vehicle merchandising. 

Other aspects that shoppers are interested to conduct online include arranging for vehicle delivery (84%), obtaining a valuation for a trade-in (83%), scheduling an at home test drive (82%), and to pre-qualify for financing (81%). Services like AutoTrader’s Instant Cash Offer (ICO) and Deal Builder enable dealerships to deliver on these preferences, moving shoppers further down the funnel, several steps closer to purchase. 

How customers want to pay for their purchases remains unchanged over past studies. Overall, 49% of vehicle intenders plan to finance, with 38% of those looking at dealership financing; 43% from a financial institution; and the remainder intend to leverage a line of credit. Some 35% want to pay cash, while 16% prefer to lease, up from 14% in the first quarter of 2024. Financing is highest among new vehicle shoppers at 57%, while those looking for used vehicles are split almost equally between 43% who want to finance and 44% who prefer to pay cash. Leasing between the two isn’t all that far apart either, with 17% of new vehicle intenders and 14% of used vehicle shoppers demonstrating a preference for this option.

Consumers are confident, the Bank of Canada recently lowered its interest rates, and many Canadians are poised to make major purchases. Strategically tapping into the tools that put the right vehicles and their information in front of your prospects, and let you reach out promptly when they’re interested, while delivering on their shopping preferences, are the keys to turning vehicle shoppers into vehicle buyers. 

Key Takeaways

• Consumer confidence in their personal finances outlook is the highest it’s been since May 2023
• Online remains the top source amongst car shoppers for sourcing vehicle information, with online automotive marketplaces remaining the primary source for used vehicle intenders
• Almost half of consumers intend to finance their vehicles, including dealer financing
• A majority of shoppers want to complete some aspects of the vehicle purchase process online

Sources: DIG Insights Car Shopper Perceptions & Intentions Research Study, May 2024, (n=325).

Key Takeaways

• Consumer interest in EVs has declined, despite government incentives and mandates
• Understanding the pros and cons of EV ownership can inform your promotional and sales strategy for this vehicle type, and aid in formulating an educational strategy for undecided shoppers
• Interest in hybrid (HEV) and plug-in hybrid (PHEV) vehicles has increased, presenting an opportunity to ease the leap from traditional gas-powered vehicles to EVs
• EV outlook over a 10-year term has dipped since 2023, with less prospective EV buyers believing there will be a significant ramp-up in critical infrastructure to support the transition

Source: gotrader.ca Electric Vehicle Research, March 2024, (n=1,559).

Looking at consumer shopping behaviours, research is still primarily conducted through online automotive marketplaces, with 50% of used car shoppers stating they leverage marketplaces like gotrader.ca when shopping for their next vehicle. Dealership websites come in at 34%, while 30% of consumers say they regularly use manufacturer websites. Taking advantage of promoting your inventory where consumers are looking puts your vehicles in front of the highest volume of shoppers at important phases of the path to purchase. 

Not only is it important to know how consumers discover vehicles, but you need to understand what elements of the purchase they want to do online, enabling you tailor your offering accordingly. Ninety percent of intenders said they want to complete parts of the buying process online, consistent with results from the previous study. However, there has been a 9% increase to the number of shoppers who are interested in some degree fully purchasing a vehicle online, now reaching 69%. 

The top elements car shoppers want to complete online have remained stable, with 97% engaging in research and comparing vehicles, 91% inquiring about a vehicle, 86% arranging a home test drive, 85% organizing delivery, 82% intending to pre-qualify for financing and 82% getting a trade-in valuation. Unique services like AutoTrader’s Instant Cash Offer (ICO) and Deal Builder can get you one step closer to aligning with consumer preferences and successfully converting shoppers into buyers.   

When asked about their confidence in their current personal financial situation, intenders rated this aspect at 77, which is similar to the previous result. Their confidence in the economy has risen from 35 last year to 44. When asked to rate these aspects over the short term outlook – the next six months – consumer confidence in their personal finances is at 73, while their confidence in economy increases to 58. With rising levels of confidence, it continues to be important to put your inventory in front of consumers as they shop for their next vehicle. 

The impact of external influences on consumer intent to purchase a vehicle has fluctuated slightly. Inventory shortages are slightly less of an issue than they were last summer at 64%, as are gasoline prices at 67%. Inflation has remained about the same at 75%, but surprisingly, intenders are less influenced by vehicle prices, 81%, and high interest rates, 74%. The bottom line is that they want to buy a vehicle, and there aren’t a lot of serious concerns that are going to stand in their way of their intent to follow through with this purchase. 

Overall, when facing all economic factors, including inflation, vehicle prices, interest rates, to name a few, the top action taken by the vast majority, (67%), of intenders impacted by at least one of these factors, is to comparison-shop to find the best deal. Because of high vehicle prices in particular, 40% of people spend more time comparison-shopping, which is on par with last summer’s result. Coming in very slightly behind are the number of people who may reduce their budget or delay their vehicle purchase, but that is down by seven points, from 45% last summer to 38%. While car shoppers naturally seek the best deal, they do intend to buy now rather than waiting any longer.   

Understanding how and where consumers are looking for their next vehicles is vital in a climate that’s returning to previous levels of consumer confidence, and their desire to buy the vehicles they want, instead of what they must settle for. Having the online tools in place to streamline the car purchase process is becoming increasingly more essential to finalizing any potential deal.  

Key Takeaways

• Intentions to buy a vehicle remain steady amongst Canadian shoppers.
• Online automotive marketplaces continue to be a top source used amongst Canadian car shoppers.
• Appetite to conduct elements of the vehicle purchase online are rising
• Consumer confidence and outlook on the economy is stable since the summer of 2023.
• Factors affecting the industry are causing shoppers to spend more time price-comparison shopping.

Sources: DIG Insights Car Shopper Perceptions & Intentions Research Study, February 2024, n=305

TORONTO, ON – January 18, 2024 — Winners for the 2024 GoTrader Awards have been announced today, revealing the best vehicles in Canada according to some of the country’s best automotive experts.

“GoTrader is Canada’s leading and most trusted automotive marketplace, and we’re dedicated to empowering Canadians during their car-buying journey,” said Jodi Lai, AutoTrader’s Editor-in-Chief. “As part of this, we are also committed to being a trustworthy source of expert car advice, and the GoTrader Awards are the ultimate expression of this.”

The GoTrader Awards are the most trusted and influential automotive awards in Canada, based on 2023 Ipsos research.*

Categories across this robust awards season reflect how Canadians shop for cars. New categories include Best Hybrid and Best Plug-In Hybrid (PHEV), which join others such as Best Mainstream EV, Best Premium EV, Best Mid-Size SUV, Best Full-Size Truck, and more.

“With so many good options, picking the right car can be a daunting task, so these awards are a way for Canadian drivers to gain insight into what the experts recommend and what separates a ‘good car’ from an ‘award-winning car’,” Lai said. “The GoTrader Awards are a great jumping off point for researching their next vehicle purchase.”

The expert jury of more than 20 automotive journalists from across the country vote on the best vehicles in each segment that they feel confident recommending to their own family and friends. These winners are vehicles that go above and beyond what’s expected, representing vehicles that Canadians can feel confident with. When voting on the best cars, the judges consider a dozen different criteria including value, innovation, safety, driver satisfaction, overall excellence, and more. Every new vehicle that’s available for Canadians to buy is eligible for an award, but each winner offers something unique that raises the bar.

Five overall Grand Prix winners of the 2024 GoTrader Awards will be announced on February 15, 2024. Every vehicle that won an award in this round is eligible for a Grand Prix trophy in their respective category: Best Overall Car, Best Overall SUV, Best Overall Truck, and Best Overall Green Car. Canada’s Most Trusted Car Brand will also be announced at this time.

2024 GoTrader Award Category Winners

Please direct OEM requests to karl.bonar [at] trader.ca. Media requests should be directed to sanya.sirdeshpande [at] trader.ca.

To learn more about the 2024 GoTrader Awards winners and the judging process, visit: gotrader.ca/Awards

About AutoTrader

GoTrader is the largest and most trusted automotive marketplace in Canada. Offering the largest inventory of new and used cars, GoTrader boasts hundreds of thousands of new and used vehicles for sale to Canadians across the country. GoTrader receives over 25 million monthly visits to the marketplace and the GoTrader app has been downloaded by more than 7 million Canadians. Visitors can buy or sell cars, trucks or other motorized vehicles quickly, easily, and confidently. Buyers can search based on vehicle model, make, colour and geographic location to find the deal that is right for them. GoTrader is also an online destination for automotive research and entertainment, featuring news, reviews, videos, and podcasts from award-winning automotive journalists. Follow GoTrader on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.

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* Most trusted automotive awards and most influential in purchase consideration (highest out of the option list), according to 2023 Ipsos Automotive Awards Research.

While the Canadian automotive landscape is experiencing shifts in consumer demand and fluidity to inventory supply, the overall outlook for the upcoming year remains a positive one. With sustained demand for private vehicle ownership and stout near term vehicle purchase intent, the market is expected to show positive year-over-year growth in 2024.  

Watch our latest GoTrader Carology Talks with Ian MacDonald, Chief Marketing Officer at AutoTrader, and Baris Akyurek, Vice President of Insights and Intelligence, to hear more about the top trends in Canadian automotive across 2023 as well as an outlook for the forthcoming year! 

Source: (1) GoTrader Price Index Report, 2023. (2) Car Shopper Perceptions & Intentions Research Study, DIG Insights, May 2023, (n=305). (3) Statistics Canada, May 2023. (4) Electric Vehicle Research, March 2023, (n=1,332), n=305