Main takeaways
- Only 29% of 2025 car buyers knew the exact vehicle they wanted when they started shopping (Cox Automotive).
- More than half of 2025 buyers did the whole purchase in person, and only 7% bought entirely online.
- 2025 buyers spent about 7 hours researching online and nearly 6 hours at dealerships.
- The top reason 2024 new-car shoppers gave for not buying online: they wanted to see the vehicle in person.
Each January, Cox Automotive publishes how the previous year’s car buyers shopped. We read it for one reason: to know what happens on the lot, where our graphics are.
Most started undecided
Only 29% of 2025 buyers knew the exact vehicle they wanted when they started shopping: 37% of new-car buyers and 26% of used. Two in three, 66%, considered both new and used. Cox surveyed 2,344 buyers who used the internet while shopping, so that’s the base for the 2025 figures here.
Most still bought in person
| How 2025 buyers bought | Share |
|---|---|
| Entirely in person | 53% |
| A mix of online and in person | 40% |
| Entirely online | 7% |
Where the hours went
| 2025 buyers’ time | Hours |
|---|---|
| Researching online | 7 h 11 m |
| At other dealers or sellers | 2 h 55 m |
| At the dealer where they bought | 2 h 55 m |
| All buying activities, in total | 13 h 59 m |
Why they came in
The top reason 2024 new-car shoppers gave for not buying online was wanting to see, touch and smell the vehicle; “more information in person” ranked third. Only 6% of 2025 buyers had a test drive at home.
What that leaves for the glass
We don’t take any of this as advice about how to sell cars; that’s your side of the desk. We take it as a description of where the car gets looked at: on the lot, often by someone who hasn’t settled on it yet.
So the glass carries the year, the model and the facts worth knowing, and a ShortCut carries the rest.
On the used row. The year, the model and three facts on the glass, a Fresh Trade mark on the pillar and a ShortCut on the door.
Sources
Cox Automotive, Car Buyer Journey Study 2025 (report summary, Jan 2026; 2,344 buyers who used the internet while shopping): knowing the vehicle (p. 11), time (p. 14), how they bought (p. 17), home test drives (p. 19).
Cox Automotive, 2024 Car Buyer Journey Study (research summary, Jan 2025; 2,310 buyers): reasons for not buying online (p. 6).
More Field Notes
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Three or four words
Why our windshield headlines stop at four words, and where the rest of the detail goes.
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Why our QR graphics say “point your phone camera”
What two Census Bureau studies found about printed QR codes, and where our instruction wording comes from.