Study: Consumers less excited about Black Friday sales at dealership

(November 7, 2018) Each year car dealerships around the country follow the rest of the retail world and offer Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals on new and used vehicles. But a recent study by Autolist.com found that these efforts don’t have a significant impact on consumers.

Just 28 percent of respondents said they would be more likely to buy a new or used vehicle during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday period. Exactly a third of consumers — 33 percent — said this sales period wouldn’t change their timing of when they bought a vehicle. Thirteen percent said they would be less likely to buy and 27 percent said they were unsure.

The main reason they’d stay home from the dealership on Black Friday? The crowds; they were the number one reason people said they wouldn’t consider buying a vehicle during this time, with 40 percent of respondents cited this as their reason to stay home.

A lack of meaningful promotional deals was the second most-cited reason to stay home, with 15 percent of consumers citing this as the biggest deterrent.

What’s more — despite countless Black Friday sales at dealerships throughout the country — 91 percent of consumers said they had never bought a vehicle during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday timeframe. Seven percent said they had; two percent were unsure.

Despite these low numbers, Black Friday is traditionally considered to be one of the busiest time periods for car dealerships all year and a great time for consumers to score a deal.

Like bargains on flat-screen TVs and kids’ toys, the main reason shoppers said they would consider buying a car during the Black Friday shopping season would be promotional deals on a new or used vehicle. Seventy percent said that if they did head to a dealership, the main reason would be because they expected to get a better deal or to find the salespeople more willing to negotiate.

Autolist surveyed 1,018 current car shoppers in early November to gauge their interest in Black Friday/Cyber Monday shopping.