Toyota's Camry and Prius Remain Top Cars for Auto Shoppers in April

Nashville, TN — Dataium, the largest aggregator of online automotive shopper behavior, today released its monthly ASI report. The ASI (Automotive Shopper Intensity) index, a leading predictive indicator of automotive retail sales showed April continuing a positive trend with new vehicle sales up nearly 10% from 2011.  Although the overall SAAR number was almost 5% higher than April 2011 and we expect to see continued growth over the broader market, luxury brands continue to drag the retail SAAR down about 2% from the previous month.

For the first time this year, domestic automaker Ford received the highest ASI monthly ranking of all manufacturers.  During April, leads for Ford more than doubled from the previous month.  Japanese car maker, Toyota dropped one spot to rank second, while Chevrolet remained in the third position for the second month in a row.  Although April brought a 20% monthly drop in both searches and visitors for Chevrolet, their leads jumped significantly from March, suggesting stronger sales volumes for the brand in the upcoming weeks.
 
Toyota's winning streak continued for the third straight month with both the Toyota Camry and the Toyota Prius receiving the highest rankings of all new vehicles. Eric Brown, CEO of Dataium noted, “A combination of Toyota's recent marketing campaigns which include low interest financing, and the fuel efficiency of both models have helped keep the brand’s momentum and consumer interest high. This should positively impact sales for the brand as we move into the peak summer selling months."
 
Despite record retail sales in April, the ASI showed the Nissan Rogue having the most dramatic ASI change of all new vehicles, declining by 9% from March.  In addition to the Rogue, the Hyundai Sonata also had significant ASI declines while the Chevrolet Camaro’s ASI score increased the most from the previous month.

Through proprietary data collection and analytics, Dataium aggregates and measures billions of auto shopper behavioral events from a database of over 100 million active auto shoppers across a network of diverse automotive websites. Dataium not only provides data and research on auto shopper/buyer behavior nationally, but by specific makes, models, vehicle segments, and markets, as well. The national report is available for download at dataium.com/library. Dataium reports and dashboards are available on a subscription basis or may be customized to access real-time updates to measure in-market lead behavior, advertising effectiveness, digital marketing performance, and website design proficiency.

To request complete access to Dataium's ASI predictive modeling tool on future consumer demand by make, model, trim level, segment, region, and market, contact Dataium at www.dataium.com/contact, or call 877-896-DATA (3282).

About Dataium, LLC
Dataium is the largest aggregator of Internet automotive shopping activity. With its Cloud Intelligence® platform, the company collects, analyzes, and indexes billions of online automotive shopping events from a database of over 100 million active auto shoppers, each week. The company supports cutting-edge data collection and reporting technology; VisiCogn® Collection Utility, VisiCogn® Knowledge Center, and is also known for its ASI™ index. For more information, visit www.dataium.com, email: [email protected], or call 877-896-DATA (3282).

05/18/12