When buying a car Americans are mostly influenced by the salesperson in a dealership. That’s the main result of annual study made by Maritz Research, a marketing research firm located in St. Louis, USA. The right information, and the best communication are the key factors a salesguy can have in order to catch a buyer. It means final decision is actually made inside the dealership only if the sales staff is good enough to convince a buyer that is getting more and more informed before buying a car. Almost 22% of people looking to buy a car said the salesperson is what mostly influenciate their purchase. Close to it, 19% said they were influenced by comments or recomendations of close people, which is also important to consider as unlike it was tought, regular buyers (not fans) ask their relatives and friends about a specific car or for some options they could buy. What can be called viral marketing. It is interesting because normally industry thinks buyer’s final decision is stronly influenced by Ad or internet. Certainly people wants information and they see the Ads. But at the end what counts more is what their friends tell them and how good the salesperson is. In the other hand, social networks such as Facebook, Twitter or chats have a very small impact on the purchase decision. This could be a reason why GM recently stopped advertising in Facebook as they were not getting so much clients from it. Advertising impact is less effective than recent years: TV ads occupies place number 7 among the options influenciating the purchase, while newspaper ads occupies #10, and Magazine ads #16. This is the ranking:
Fiat Group World 