For all the changes taking place online, the showroom still holds one advantage technology cannot reproduce.
The first time a customer sees a salesperson may no longer be across a showroom desk. It may be on Instagram or TikTok, where a quick walkaround of a newly arrived car lands in their feed between cooking videos, news clips and whatever else the algorithm has decided to serve them that day.
Sometimes that person is already looking for a car. Sometimes the video simply puts a model on their radar. They save it, search for similar examples, watch a review and work out what the repayments might look like. A WhatsApp enquiry follows, and only then do they visit the dealership.
The sale still ends with a car changing hands, but the work leading up to it is now scattered across listings, social media, search results, finance calculators, messages and face-to-face conversations. Buyers move between them naturally. The dealership may only become aware of the customer after much of the initial research has already been done.
The amount of activity taking place online gives some idea of the scale. AutoTrader’s 2025 Industry Report recorded 649 million searches and 439 million advert views from more than 46 million users during the year. Advert views were up 13% in 2024.
Not all of that attention turned into an inquiry, of course. People browse cars they cannot afford, compare models months before they plan to buy and return to the same advert several times. Even so, it is clear that the online listing is no longer a preview of what happens in the showroom. For many buyers, it is where the serious shopping starts.
George Mienie, CEO of AutoTrader, has watched that change at close range, having led the business through its move from print classifieds to a fully digital marketplace over nearly two decades.
“Buyers are spending longer in the research phase, comparing alternatives and testing pricing against the market before enquiring. For dealers, that raises the bar,” says Mienie.
Research elsewhere suggests that the showroom remains important even as more of the homework moves online. Cox Automotive’s 2025 Car Buyer Journey Study found that buyers in the United States spent an average of seven hours and 11 minutes researching and shopping for a car online. Three-quarters used third-party automotive sites, 59% visited dealership websites and 26% used social media. Yet only 7% completed the entire purchase online, while half handled all of the transactional steps in person.
The figures are American, so they cannot be passed off as a picture of South African behaviour. What they do show is that online research and the dealership are not competing versions of the same process. Buyers are using both.
By the time they arrive
A customer who walks into a dealership today may already know the model, engine and derivative they want. They may also know what other dealers are asking and have a rough idea of what their current car is worth. That can make the discussion more direct, but it does not necessarily make the decision simple.
There is more information available, but also more of it to sort through. Reviews may disagree. Specifications can differ between model years. An attractive repayment advertised online may depend on a sizeable deposit, a balloon payment or a finance term the customer did not expect. Two cars that appear almost identical in photographs may have very different service histories, warranty cover or optional equipment.
Simply reading the brochure back to the customer is not much help when the customer has already read it. The salesperson needs to establish what the buyer knows, what they may have misunderstood and what still needs explaining. Often the useful part of the conversation is not how much power the car produces, but what the deal will cost over time, what is included in the warranty and whether the vehicle suits the way the customer actually drives.
That conversation is also happening in more places. A clear, informed reply on WhatsApp may be the reason a buyer chooses one dealership over another. A vague response, a repayment with missing conditions or a salesperson who disappears after the first message can just as easily send the customer elsewhere.
When the salesperson is also the content creator
Dealership social media used to sit largely with the marketing department. Now it is common to see salespeople filming their own walkarounds, answering questions on camera, taking part in trends and sharing new stock or customer handovers from their personal accounts.
There is an obvious sales benefit when it works. A buyer becomes familiar with the person before making contact, while the salesperson gets a chance to show details that may be lost in a standard set of listing photographs. A useful video can also introduce someone to a car they were not searching for, particularly when several models compete around the same price.
Dealers can overestimate what this kind of attention means. A video with thousands of views may produce little genuine interest, while an ordinary listing for a well-priced car may find a buyer quickly. Social media is good at putting people and vehicles in front of an audience. A marketplace is more likely to catch the shopper who has moved from casual interest to comparing actual stock.
The informal nature of the content does not excuse sloppy information either. If a car has been sold, the post should say so. If a monthly repayment is mentioned, the terms need to be clear. A salesperson can build a sizeable following and still lose a customer through poor follow-up or a showroom experience that does not match the friendly online persona.
The best dealership content is usually quite simple. It shows the car properly, answers a question someone might genuinely have and gives the buyer a reason to make contact. It need not turn every salesperson into an influencer.
Where AutoTrader Intelligence fits
With so many similar listings to work through, some of the newer technology is aimed at making comparison easier. AutoTrader Intelligence includes Vehicle Highlights, which compares a particular listing with similar stock and pulls out differences such as lower mileage or better fuel economy. Consumer Recommendations uses browsing behaviour to show shoppers other cars that may be relevant, including models they have not searched for directly.
There is value in both. A useful distinction can stop one car from disappearing among dozens of near-identical adverts, while a recommendation can broaden the search when the buyer has become fixed on one option. They are still prompts rather than conclusions. Lower mileage does not settle questions about condition or service history, and an algorithm cannot know every practical or financial consideration behind a purchase.
This is where the technology and the salesperson can work well together. One can surface the car or the comparison; the other can explain what it means in the context of that particular customer. The usefulness of either still depends on the basics being right: accurate information, sensible pricing, decent photographs and a prompt response when the buyer enquires.
Selling a car in 2026 asks more of the person on the showroom floor. Product knowledge still matters, but so does the ability to answer a message properly, speak naturally on camera and deal with a customer who may have spent hours researching before making contact.
For many buyers, the dealership remains where the final confidence is won or lost. They still want to see the car, drive it, understand the deal and know who they will be dealing with if something goes wrong. The salesperson still closes many of these sales. The difference is that the customer has already travelled quite a long way before walking through the door.
