1 in 4 Used-Car Shoppers Uses Web, Study Says

One in four people shopping for a used car goes to the Internet for help, according to the first publicly released study on the topic. The nearly 10,000 used-car buyers polled by J.D. Power & Associates said they most frequently visited the Web site of Kelley Blue Book for pricing and other general information, as well as the sites of Consumer Reports, Autobytel.com, Edmund’s and Microsoft Corp.’s CarPoint. Half of the respondents searched online classified sites to look for cars, the study said, and for those people, Irvine-based Autobytel.com was the most popular destination, followed by Auto Trader Online, CarPoint, Autoweb.com and Cars.com. (Cars.com is a product of Classified Ventures, a partnership of newspaper companies that includes Times Mirror, parent company of the Los Angeles Times.) Although the future of vehicle classifieds may be online, the present is not, said Christopher Denove, director of consulting operations for J.D. Power. Internet ads are cluttered with old or invalid listings, frustrating potential buyers, he said.