Consumers love to review the cars they purchase – especially Hondas, Toyotas, and Fords, according to new data released by Cars.com.
With seven out of 10 car shoppers finding customer reviews to be extremely trustworthy,¹ Cars.com wanted to know which vehicles get the most customer attention. To find the answer, we examined the millions of reviews available on our own site. According to our research, the top five most reviewed vehicles on Cars.com are:
These findings underscore three important realities:
The most-reviewed car, the Honda Accord, is also a top seller. Clearly, shoppers are reading and posting reviews about the cars they’re buying the most – and those reviews shape perceptions. In a recent study of dealer reviews, we asked car shoppers how much they trusted different sources when it came to researching a vehicle. As noted, we found that 70% of car shoppers find customer reviews, like the vehicle reviews on Cars.com, to be very to extremely trustworthy.¹
“Shopper reviews are a critical part of the car shopping process,” said David Greene, a data analyst with Cars.com. “Cars are one of the largest investments anyone makes, and the car you choose is going to be in your life for years. Shoppers want to know from trusted peers whether or not they’ve had a good experience with certain makes and models. The Honda Accord is a top-seller, and has been for years, so it’s no surprise that it is also one of the most-reviewed cars on Cars.com,” Greene said.
Customer reviews make vehicles more visible and findable. So it’s important that dealers are present on third-party sites like Cars.com in order to make your vehicle inventory more visible to in-market car shoppers. We know that 79% of Cars.com shoppers are in market to purchase a car in the next 6 months,³ and Cars.com influences 60% of all Sales and Service customers. ⁴ Third party sites like Cars.com allow you to leverage your audience for your advertising in a way you can’t do on your own. By offering an unbiased platform for vehicle, customer, and expert reviews, we are a go-to source for many car shoppers along their car buying journey.
Dealers also have a role to play in reviews. To boost the volume of reviews for the vehicles on your lot, you need to treat customer reviews like a competitive asset. Doing so means creating a systematic way to listen to reviews, respond to them, and encourage them. The recently published DealerRater Guide to Online Reviews discusses how to take ownership of reviews, including the all-important step of encouraging customers to create reviews. Get started today taking ownership of reviews.
[1] Car Shoppers Are Judging You. Cars.com White Paper, January 2017.
[2] Cars.com Vehicle and Dealer Review Data. Cars.com Insights, March 2017.
[3] Consumer Metrics Study. Cars.com, March 2017.
[4] Transparency AI Q1 Study. May 2017.
