French Carmakers Sell on the Web

While US carmakers are dealing with an abysmal market for auto sales and doing their best to move cars out of retail showrooms, it is interesting to note that a growing number of French Internet users are buying their cars online.

According to a study by Groupe Xerfi, sales of new vehicles on the Internet are booming. In fact, online new-car sales in France grew 25% in 2007 and 31% in 2008. The research company projected only 20% growth in 2009 due to the economic slowdown, before accelerating again with 36% in 2010 and 40% in 2011.

Those huge growth numbers represent change from a small base. Xerfi said Web sales would represent 5% of all car sales in 2011. Even if Detroit followed suit, that’s not enough to move the needle as much as automakers need in 2009.

Still, the prospect of reducing costs through online sales is worth US carmakers’ attention.

While Xerfi said that online car sales in France would reach 5% of the total market in 2011, the automotive goods category as a whole represented 5% of all online spending in the first half of 2008, according to TNS Media Intelligence data cited by LeJournalduNet.

Based on a January 2008 estimate of French business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce for 2008 by the Federation des Enterprises de Vente a Distance (FEVAD), that means about $770 million in cars and automotive goods were sold online during the first half of the year.