Women, apparently, are way more relaxed about buying a car online than men. According to a recent analysis by a British online-only car vendor, men are three times more likely than women to report feeling 'wary' of buying a car without seeing it first.
And the study also shows that apart from being more relaxed about the online car-buying experience than men, women also appear to be more relaxed about many other factors affecting their choice. For example, when women take a test drive before buying their next car, they do it just to see if they like driving the car, while men like to see for themselves that there are no faults.
Women are also less worried than men about their car continuing to feel comfortable over time and less concerned that they will become bored of their new car. BuyaCar.co.uk, which did the analysis, surveyed 705 motorists on a range of attitudes to car-buying, and reports that that women now make up 50 per cent of its customers. Women usually make up a third of customers for traditional car dealerships.
This difference is attributed to the fact that one in four men describe themselves as 'wary' of buying a car without seeing it first, compared with fewer than one in 10 women. Of those surveyed, 20 per cent of men say they want to see for themselves that there are no faults, whereas just 13 per cent of women cite that as a reason, overwhelmingly preferring to be sure they enjoy the feel of driving the car before buying.
“We have long seen that women are more heavily represented among our customers than they tend to be in the traditional car buying format and this research may go some way toward explaining why,” says Christofer Lloyd, editor of BuyaCar.co.uk. “While women more often report feeling stressed by the traditional face-to-face car-buying process than men, when it comes to issues relating to the vehicle itself, it seems that women are more zen than men,” he adds.
