Ease of Purchase Plummets in November

The term “unprecedented” has been used a lot in recent years. When it comes to November’s Ease of Purchase scorecard, that word seems more than appropriate. For the first time in the more than three years CDK has tracked customer sentiment, our primary score has fallen below 70% to the lowest ever, 66%. This is down from 85% just last month and follows a downward trajectory from September’s 89%.

This massive fall was observed in our main metric of how easy it was, overall, to buy a car. Nearly every step in the process saw not just drops but double-digit drops. After seeing the results, the CDK research team double-checked the data and confirmed this is what buyers experienced over the full time frame of the survey. One way we looked at validating the accuracy was to see if how people bought a car changed as dramatically as sentiment scores. And, as we’ve seen for years, most people still completed the entire deal at the dealership, and the number who bought online stayed flat at just 2%.

One of the data sets we discovered around lower overall scores relates to how people found the car they eventually bought. Generally, the more people who found a car in stock, the higher the Ease of Purchase number. However, while finding the car in stock fell to 49% from 55% last month, it’s still higher than the 48% in September when the Ease of Purchase score was a solid 89%.

More people had to order in transit and more picked an alternate car that was available but these numbers, too, aren’t significantly different from recent months. These alterations from buying in stock did lead to a drop in the people who said finding the car they hoped to purchase was easy, falling from 87% last month to 73% in November. That’s a historically average number as last November 74% of people said this part of the process was easy. And November 2024’s Ease of Purchase score was quite high at 91%.

Perplexed? So are we.

When digging into survey respondents’ comments, there weren’t a lot of clear answers either. There was a single comment that cited the dealer “just wanted a sale” and another that the Finance Manager was “a little rude” but most of the criticism seemed relatively constructive:

• “Enhance the online appointment system” 
• “I had a small issue with the registration and it took multiple calls to get it fixed. A dealership should handle those things promptly and professionally” 
• “The whole process felt a bit unorganized”

Nothing truly out of the ordinary from past months.

When we looked at each step in the process, they were far lower than in October. But October itself had seen high scores across the board except for the top Ease of Purchase number. When comparing steps — like applying for credit or filling out the final paperwork to complete the purchase — to two months ago or November 2024, they were either flat or fell just a few percentage points, not 10 points or more.

The volatility in the used market right alongside low levels of equity may have also impacted the score for how easy it was to agree on the trade-in value. That number was the lowest of any at 45% in November, down 66% in October and 56% in November 2024. Those outside factors are sometimes difficult to contend with but something generally in a dealer’s control, like the test drive, would seem less likely to see a similar fall.

That wouldn’t prove to be the case as just 65% of buyers said it was easy to test out the car they were interested in. That’s down from 80% in October, 74% in September, and 87% in November of 2024.

If the industry is headed into economic headwinds and potential slow sales over the next few months, there should be an opportunity to improve processes. Interestingly enough, CDK has observed some of its highest scores during the months of high-volume sales. Perhaps dealers and staff thrive on that intensity and simply need to find a way to uncover similar vibes during slower months.