ConsumerInsight Tracks the `Say-Do Gap` in Car Buying: 52% Planned to Buy Within Two Years, but One in Four Followed Through

SEOUL, South Korea - April 23, 2026 - ConsumerInsight, a leading automotive market research firm, today released new findings on the consumer `Say-Do Gap` - the difference between what consumers say they intend to do and what they actually do - based on large-scale automotive survey data matched at the individual respondent level.

The analysis asks a simple question: among consumers who said in 2023 that they planned to buy a vehicle within two years, how many had actually done so by July 2025? The answer: about one in four. At the same time, even among consumers who said they had no plan to buy, about one in eight purchased a vehicle anyway. It is the first time this intention-to-behavior gap has been measured in Korea using individually matched, longitudinal data at this scale.

In the 2023 survey, 52% of matched respondents said they intended to buy a vehicle within two years [Table 1]. By the 2025 follow-up, 13% of all matched respondents were consumers who had expressed that intention and then actually purchased. Converted to the base of planned buyers, the actual-purchase conversion rate was 25% - meaning only one in four who said they would buy actually did so within the period.

The gap also showed up on the other side of the market. Respondents with no two-year purchase plan made up 48% of the matched sample. Among them, 6% of the total sample - 13% within that group - purchased a vehicle anyway, roughly half the conversion rate of the intention group.

Overall, 19% of matched respondents purchased a vehicle by 2025. Of those buyers, about two-thirds had originally said they intended to buy, and one-third had not - underscoring that stated intention, while informative, captures only part of who ultimately enters the market.

ConsumerInsight said the results point to a meaningful distance between stated plans and actual behavior: only 25% of intenders followed through, and 13% of non-intenders bought anyway. At the same time, the purchase rate among intenders was nearly double that of non-intenders, confirming that purchase intention remains a valuable - if imperfect - demand signal for automakers and marketers.

The Say-Do Gap was not limited to whether consumers bought a vehicle - it also appeared in what they bought. Among all actual buyers, 31% purchased the brand they had originally preferred, and 14% purchased their exact preferred model [Table 2]. On the base of purchase intenders alone, the equivalent rates were 44% and 21% - meaning only about one in five intenders ended up with both their preferred brand and preferred model. ConsumerInsight noted that real-world constraints such as available budget, new model launches, delivery timing, promotions, and taxes can significantly reshape a consumer’s final choice.

The Say-Do Gap has long been discussed in academic and industry circles, largely on a theoretical basis or through small-scale, cross-sectional studies. ConsumerInsight’s analysis is significant for quantifying the phenomenon using individually matched, longitudinal data from roughly 29,182 consumers tracked over two years - a scale with few, if any, precedents worldwide.

Building on this release, ConsumerInsight plans to continue publishing multi-angle analyses of the Say-Do Gap - examining which consumer segments show the widest gaps, which vehicle categories are most affected, and how economic conditions or new model launches shape the shift from intention to purchase. The goal is to help automakers and marketers design and execute more precise, evidence-based strategies.