Big data

Big data has been a business opportunity in South Africa for decades. However, extracting and leveraging its full value is often a complex process. AutoTrader Car Industry Report fills the data gap.

The South African motor industry

The SA motor industry is being held back and historically crippled by unstructured and incomplete data. Having suffered from the ineffective collection and use of VIN data since inception.

 5 years ago, we set out to create South Africa’s first ever comprehensive vehicle database that captures and organises VIN data down to feature level. Vehicle by vehicle, over 11 million VIN numbers were worked through. Using over 4 million pieces of car specification metadata. This cleaned and captured into our databases.

The value this Car Taxonomy wields is far-reaching. It demonstrates, like never before, how big data can be leveraged to become the new capital.

Car Taxonomy

This taxonomy provides benefits for both buyers & sellers. Buyers benefit from the vastly-improved search functionality that makes searching for your next car even quicker and easier. For sellers, by combining this vehicle taxonomy data with other critical information like transactional valuation data, retail price data and market supply and demand data, AutoTrader is uniquely positioned to provide live market information to its customers & the industry.

A sound proxy for demand, supply and pricing

AutoTrader SA has the largest audience of in-market car shoppers. Now coupled with having fixed South Africa’s car taxonomy challenge by building the most  comprehensive and structured VIN database in the country. Therefore, AutoTrader serves as a sound proxy for South Africa’s automotive market demand and supply.

 As a proud supporter and contributor to the South African automotive industry, we felt compelled to produce a Car Industry Report that would enable the market to gain valuable insights into the most important factor of the South African motoring industry – car shopper consumer attention.

OEM’s and Car Dealers can benefit

OEM’s and dealers are beginning to realise that cars don’t only compete with each other based on their category. They also comepete on the basis of where consumer attention lies. A car brand may not view another brand as a competitor, but search and demand data (consumer attention) often tells a different story.

Attention Economy

Understanding the Attention Economy is crucial when building strategy in the South African automotive industry. No matter what size your business is. A small dealership, large dealership, OEM or a group selling both used or new cars. Because the used car market in South Africa dwarfs the new car market, understanding consumer attention for used cars can play a major role in new car strategies.

I hope you enjoy reading the report as much as we enjoyed compiling it. Let’s work together to make a difference, and make the South African automotive industry even better.

Download the AutoTrader Car Industry Report here.