CarsDirect.com Study Finds Majority of Online Car Buyers Satisfied With Experience
LOS ANGELES--May 2, 2001--Echoing American consumers' growing acceptance of online car buying, CarsDirect.com, the leading direct online automotive provider, today announced results of the latest "CarsDirect.com Buyer Snapshot Survey," which found that a vast majority -- 96.6 percent -- of CarsDirect.com customers were thoroughly satisfied with their car-buying experience on the CarsDirect.com Web site.
The survey also found that CarsDirect.com customers were equally satisfied with the CarsDirect.com Priority Network Dealer from whom they took delivery of their new vehicle.
The CarsDirect.com Buyer Snapshot Survey is issued electronically to every CarsDirect.com customer who purchased a vehicle at the Web site. Of the CarsDirect.com customers surveyed, more than 600 responded in the month of April 2001.
With its real-time customer feedback component, this online "Snapshot" survey complements the more comprehensive Customer Satisfaction Tracking Study that CarsDirect.com conducts. Together these studies serve as the company's ongoing performance benchmark.
"While consumer feedback about other Internet auto sites varies widely, our consistently positive customer feedback and business growth clearly demonstrate that consumers are delighted with the direct car-buying process that only CarsDirect.com offers," said Bob Brisco, chief executive officer, CarsDirect.com.
"Together with our 3,000 quality automotive dealer partners, CarsDirect.com will continue to meet our customers' needs for a better way to buy a new car."
A recent study issued by Jupiter Media Metrix noted that online car sales will increase to 8 percent of the new car market (or $33 billion) in 2004, with 1 million cars sold online in 2003. In March 2001, CarsDirect.com reported a record 1,400,000 unique visitors to its Web site, nearly four times the 400,000 users per month visiting the site in early 2000.
The Customer Snapshot Survey results are only the latest indication of CarsDirect.com's commitment to making the car-buying experience faster and easier. Earlier this week the company also announced a new technology to automate the approval of auto financing in real time.
Unmatched by any other online car-buying service, the CarsDirect.com finance decisioning engine provides customers with easy and simultaneous access to CarsDirect.com's premier lending partners and allows for instant financing approval by these financial institutions. (See news release dated April 30, 2001.)
About CarsDirect.com
Los Angeles-based CarsDirect.com is the leading multi-brand online car-buying service, providing new automobiles and related products and services, such as loan and lease financing and in-demand aftermarket products including extended warranties.
As the pioneer of the direct online car-buying model, CarsDirect.com offers upfront pricing to consumers, who can research, price, order, purchase, insure and finance a vehicle online via an intuitive Web site that offers product information for nearly every make, model and style of new automobile available in the United States today. Shoppers can also simultaneously compare the specifications of competing vehicles.
In February 2001, CarsDirect.com acquired Greenlight.com, bringing four of the nation's largest automotive retailers -- UnitedAuto Group/Penske Automotive, Asbury Automotive, Hendrick Automotive Group and Sonic Automotive -- under one online brand and increasing the number of priority dealers in CarsDirect.com's network to 3,000.
CarsDirect.com also became the exclusive preferred partner for Amazon.com , enhancing the online car-buying experience for Amazon's 29 million customers.
CarsDirect.com has received top awards and honors from Forbes Magazine, PC Computing, PC World, Time Digital, Yahoo! Internet Life and e-commerce authority Gomez.