Posted by Brian Berg Google+
Each year, the NADA (National Automobile Dealers Association) publishes their annual report outlining their view of everything from Average Dealership Profile data to Employment and Payroll, to Advertising and automobile mailing list statistics. Their most recent report outlines a number of very interesting statistics that every car dealership General Manager and Owner should study and understand. Namely, they’ve concluded that from 2011 to 2012, the advertising expenses increased on higher unit sales, but fell on a per-vehicle basis to $621.
Here are a number of other interesting statistics:
Average dealership expenses in 2012 were as follows:
Payroll - $2,924,824
Advertising - $405,907
Rent and equivalent - $404,554
Also in 2012, new vehicles represented 56.2% of sales revenue, while used vehicles represented 31.8%. Service and part came in at 12%.
Advertising expenditures, by medium 10 year comparison
Medium 2002 2012
Newspaper 46.7% 16.9%
Radio 15.7% 15.9%
Television 16.7% 20.2%
Direct Mail 7.4% 10.8%
Internet 5.0% 26.5%
Other 8.5% 9.6%
The average dealership spent a total of $43,955 on automobile mailing lists for direct mail purposes in 2012.
The average total advertising as of % of total sales was 1.06%.
New-light-vehicle sales were up 13.4%, as 14.4 million units were sold in 2012, compared with 12.7 million units in 2011. Pent-up demand and incentives have been cited as major reasons for the increase in new light vehicle sales. Both new-medium-and heavy-duty-truck sales also showed an increase over the previous year at 13%. Used-vehicle sales were also up 4.5 percent.
Though the average price of gasoline increased by almost 10 cents a gallon, the report finds that gas price did not have an adverse effect on the overall growth of sales in the U.S. automotive industry.