Do Auto Shows Sell Cars? VOTE

I’m going to be attending the New York International Auto Show today as a ‘legit’ member of the press (got my TundraHeadquarters.com press credentials and everything). While I personally find auto shows to be a great way to spend an entire day, I think that their role in a typical consumer’s purchase process is very limited. In other words, I highly doubt Toyota’s super-duper expensive Lexus display (post is on the way) is ever going to move enough iron to justify the time and money that went into it.

The question before us – Do Auto Shows Sell Cars? – is obviously very important to manufacturers. Automotive News journalist Ed Lapham has written about some research that shows auto shows work. However, I have my doubts. Here’s why:

1. Women influence 80-90% of purchases. I don’t have any data, but I worked at car dealerships for almost 10 years. I’d bet the house that woman directly make more than 50% of car purchases, and influence all but a handful of the remainder. First of all, women have a lot of household purchasing power. Secondly, men (wisely) don’t buy cars without the women in their lives signing off. Finally, if a man doesn’t have a woman in his life, he buys a car or truck that he hopes will attract one (that’s influence).

2. Women rarely go to auto shows for fun. Call me a chauvinist, but it’s a rare woman that wants to go to the auto show to hang out. I’m not saying that they don’t exist – I love to meet them, in fact – but none of the women I know would enjoy anything more than a brief visit to the local auto show.

Therefore, if women don’t like auto shows and influence almost all purchases, auto shows don’t work…but there’s a little more detail still…

3. Car shows are short on important details. Most manufacturers hire professional models to represent their cars at the auto show, and then supplant those models with local dealer salespeople. The models rarely know the cars inside and out, and the salespeople that go to these shows also rarely know their facts too. Again, years of experience at dealerships is important here. When the manufacturer asks local dealers to “contribute” some salespeople, most dealers send their most junior and inexperienced people. That way, the experienced sales staff can stay at the store and actually sell.

Without any knowledgeable salespeople to help qualify potential buyers, someone could leave the car show with wildly incorrect or unrealistic expectations…and that doesn’t usually lead to a sale.

4. Buyers who attend auto shows were buyers already. A lot of people go to auto shows to shop, but those people were already in the market. Since people can’t buy cars at auto shows, the best a show can do is to help a shopper solidify their opinion about a particular car. Of course, because there aren’t any qualified salespeople walking the show floor, it’s entirely likely a shopper could get some bad info and rule out a particular make or model incorrectly. In other words, I think the potential benefits of an auto show are balanced by their limitations.

The Other Side Of The Argument

Lapham cites quite a few data points in his article supporting auto shows, but the most solid piece of data is this one:

39 percent of new-vehicle buyers across the country say they were greatly influenced by what they saw at an auto show in the 12 months before their purchase

See my point number 4. For every person that was positively influenced on a particular make or model, there’s a person who was negatively influenced (again, based on my experience). This is a great stat, but it doesn’t prove these buyers weren’t going to buy anyway.

In my opinion, auto shows are tons of fun, but they don’t move any more cars. What do you think?