In one of the first studies to detail how car purchasing has changed since the advent of the Internet, researchers find that online research has largely supplanted time spent at the dealership, time spent negotiating prices, and use of third-party sources such as Consumer Reports. The study, forthcoming in the June issue of the Journal of Consumer Research, also reveals that the overall time buyers spent searching for a car has increased with Internet research.

“We confirm that consumers who use the Internet appear to come to the dealer armed with better information, and that users of objective print information appear to migrate to the online version of these sources,” write Brian T. Ratchford (University of Texas, Dallas), Debabrata Talukdar (University of Buffalo), and Myung-Soo Lee (Baruch College, CUNY). “These results are consistent with the common expectation that buyers use the Internet to come to the dealer armed with price information, ready to negotiate a better buy.”