People are now using their mobile devices to source cars on sale by visiting various car dealer shops online, identifying cars and later making purchases for the cars, more often than they did an year ago.
According to a recent 2015 study on Automotive Buyer Influence, adoption of mobile use in car shopping has reported a fast growth, especially when buying already used cars which is now most common on smartphones and tablets.
The study continues to point out that there was a larger percentage of those who responded to having used either a smartphone or tablet to make car purchases, as opposed to that recorded for the year 2013, with the number of those using a desktop or laptop going down from that recorded in 2013.
With the ever-growing mobile first world where most people are preferring to do their businesses wherever they are by connecting to a mobile device, it is no surprise that the same is being witnessed in car shopping.
The only problem or challenge facing this new adoption of mobile being that with car purchases, the buyer will have to visit the dealership in person to verify the car’s availability as well verify the necessary papers.
This would only mean that even as popularity for mobile use in car shopping continues to register fast growth, there is still a lot to be done in order to win the buyers’ trust and establish a mobile-only way of doing business.
In Kenya today, one can post their cars that they want to sell on various platforms, including OLX, and the like. Also there are car specific sites such as Cheki where they help customers find cars and car sellers sell their car.
The platforms function alongside a mobile app where the seller can post a picture of their cars and have people bid on the car. In Cheki, there is the option of different car dealers putting up their cars on the site to make it easy for customers to spot them.
This new mobile trend is growing and with the increasing availability and usability of mobile platforms, it is expected that in a few years, most business operations will have to be carried out from the comfort of a home or office without physically visiting the shop.
Cheki, for example, has grown in user numbers and even expanded its operations to neighbouring countries to cater for the East Africa region as a whole, showing that indeed people are making use of the internet more often to shop for cars.
The study proposes that it will be important for car advertisers around the world to have a cross-platform presence, if they want to reach a larger audience and promote the efficiency and effectiveness of using mobile devices for car shopping.
A recent study by the Communications Authority of Kenya showed that more number of Kenyans are now coming online and the growth has been attributed to the growth in mobile internet use, this could also reflect on car shopping as well in the years to come.
