WOMEN LEAD online car purchasing up to £8,000 and typically spend £2,700 less than men when they buy a car, according to figures released by the online car supermarket BuyaCar.co.uk.
Women also choose a wider range of car body styles than men, according to analysis of more than 3,000 purchases this year.
Analysts at BuyaCar.co.uk also found that women in the 18 to 24 age bracket are the most likely to buy a car online, rather than through the traditional dealer route, representing almost half of all sales in that age group.
And while men have made black their first colour of choice in recent times, women continue to choose white first.
The budget end of the online car market is overwhelmingly favoured by women, who account for 70.3% of sales at the £4-5,000 price point and only dip below 50% of sales when cars reach £10,000 or more. In contrast, women consistently represent around a third of buyers for cars costing £25,000 and over.
The insights revealed in BuyaCar.co.uk’s real world sales figures support the long-held motor industry belief that women approach car buying with a more practical head than men, who tend to care more about the image of the cars they choose. This may account for a consistent difference in the average spend of men and women of £2,700 – a gap which has barely altered over the last 12 months.
Part of the difference in spend may reflect the tendency for women to more often choose smaller cars than men. Analysis of the top 10 model choices for the genders reveals three superminis, five medium hatchbacks, one medium crossover and one medium saloon for men. The top 10 cars bought by women are made up of three city cars, four superminis, one medium hatchback, one small crossover and one medium crossover.
BuyaCar.co.uk’s insights also suggest that future growth in online car buying is likely to be heavily driven by women. During 2020 a higher percentage of online car purchases have been made by women in every age band up to the age of 54 than are made at ordinary dealerships. Only at the ages of 55 and above do women’s share of online car purchases drop, equating to the estimated one in three reported by the traditional motor retail industry.
Christofer Lloyd, editor of BuyaCar.co.uk, said: “Our sales figures suggest that women in particular appear to have been waiting for the chance to buy cars in a different way.
“We believe that a combination of factors lead women in particular to favour the Amazon-like way of purchasing a car, ranging from a tendency to buy with the head rather than the heart to preferring the zero-pressure experience of buying online – without pushy sales people, intimidating dealer jargon or pressure to close a sale quickly.
“The difference between the proportion of sales to women on BuyaCar.co.uk and to women in traditional dealerships is stark. The fact that online car sales are led particularly by the newest generation of drivers – with women aged up to 24 representing about half of all purchases – suggests that women will be very much in the driving seat as the online car sales world grows.”
*Article Source www.buyacar.co.uk
