ConsumerInsight Quantifies the `Say-Do Gap` in Car Buying: New-Car Buyers Plan Ahead (57%), Used-Car Buyers Buy on Sudden Need (61%)

SEOUL, South Korea - May 11, 2026 - ConsumerInsight, a leading automotive market research firm, today released the second installment of its ‘Say-Do Gap’ series, examining the gap between what automotive consumers say they intend to do and what they actually do. The analysis draws on 31,852 respondents who took part in both the 2024 and 2025 waves of ConsumerInsight`s Annual Automobile Syndicated Study, tracking whether those who said in 2024 that they intended to buy a car within one year actually did so - and comparing them with consumers who made no such statement.

The results show that half of all car buyers in the past year had expressed no purchase intention when surveyed twelve months earlier. In other words, ‘planned purchases’ and ‘unplanned purchases’ were nearly equal in scale - suggesting that market analyses focused only on stated purchase intention cannot fully capture actual buying behavior. The pattern was especially pronounced in the used-car market, where unplanned purchases outnumbered planned ones, pointing to a growing need to understand what drives consumers to buy suddenly.

Among the 31,852 continuous respondents, 2,852 - or 9.0% - actually purchased a car within one year [Table 1]. Purchase-intenders converted at a far higher rate than non-intenders: 20.6% of those who had expressed one-year purchase intention went on to buy, compared with 5.6% of those who had not - more than three times higher. Yet because non-intenders vastly outnumber intenders, the two groups contributed almost equally to the overall market: planned purchases accounted for 4.6% of all tracked respondents, and unplanned purchases for 4.4% - illustrating the Say-Do Gap between stated intention and actual behavior.

For a high-priced, high-involvement purchase such as a car, the fact that nearly half of all purchases came from consumers with no prior stated intention suggests that non-intenders represent an important customer pool in their own right. Understanding what triggers these sudden purchases is an important area for further research.

In the 2024 survey, 22.4% of respondents said they intended to buy a car within one year - less than half the 52% who said they had a purchase plan within two years. Among those with one-year purchase intention, new cars were strongly preferred: 66% were considering a new car only, 28% were considering both new and used cars, and 3% were considering a used car only.

Among planned buyers - those who had stated a one-year purchase intention and went on to buy - 76.9% purchased a new car, equivalent to 3.5% of all tracked respondents. Of these new-car buyers, 62.1% (2.2% of all respondents) bought the brand they had originally preferred, and 36.4% (1.3% of all respondents) bought their originally preferred model. Brand realization outpacing overall purchase-intention realization underscores the importance of managing brand preference specifically.

Looking at actual buyers within the year, the difference between the new-car and used-car markets was stark. Among new-car buyers, 57% had already planned their purchase a year earlier. Among used-car buyers, only 39% had planned to buy - meaning 61% were unplanned purchases.

By vehicle type considered a year earlier, 92% of consumers who said they were considering a new car only went on to buy a new car. Among those who said they were considering both new and used cars, actual purchases split almost evenly: 49% bought new and 51% bought used.

This suggests that the new-car market is driven mainly by advance planning and extended consideration, while the used-car market behaves more like a situation-responsive market, shaped by price, available inventory, timing, and life changes at the moment of purchase.

Classifying purchase behavior by type, the ‘new-car purchase’ segment was the largest, followed by ‘planned purchase’ and ‘unplanned purchase’ [Table 2]. By realization Rate, planned buyers → new car’ was highest, followed by ‘all buyers → new car‘ and ‘planned buyers → preferred brand’ [Table 3]. The size of each purchase type reflects market scale, while realization rate reflects marketing efficiency - together indicating that brand-focused new-car marketing delivers the highest efficiency.

Purchase-intenders remain an important core customer group in the auto market, but unplanned purchases account for a very similar share of actual sales. While purchase-realization probability and new-car purchase probability differ between the two groups, their overall market size is nearly the same. In the used-car market especially, purchases often occur quickly once a need arises - suggesting that analysis of unplanned buyers will become increasingly important going forward.

ConsumerInsight is building a predictive model of automotive consumer behavior based on 24 years of accumulated survey data and is currently testing its applicability to the real market. Future installments of the Say-Do Gap series will examine not only purchase-intenders but also unplanned buyers` behavioral changes and likelihood of purchase realization in greater detail.