Dataium ASI Remains Flat - Consistent With Sluggish Economy

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, illustrated a tepid growth in auto demand in August, up 3.5% from July, mimicking the performance of the sluggish U.S. economy.

Toyota and Hyundai maintained their lead, ranking highest in ASI for all makes. Joining the top three was Honda, which leapt from sixth in July, to rank third in August. Lead submissions on Honda dealer websites grew 14% from the previous month.

Continuing on last month's momentum, big cars topped the ASI new vehicle ranking with the Chevrolet Silverado leading the way and the Toyota Tundra gaining three spots to rank fifth overall. In addition to the Silverado and Tundra, the ASI illustrated increasing interest in another big car segment, the crossover SUV, ranking the Honda CR-V, Infiniti JX35, Toyota Highlander and Kia Sorento in the top ten of ASI for new vehicles. Interestingly, despite a recall alert during August, the JX35 jumped six spots to rank fourth.

Although the Silverado and Tundra received high rankings, the truck segment shows softening, with the segment's overall performance in August down 15% from July. However, the Tundra, aided by strong incentives, was the only model within the segment to mollify the downward trend and instead show an increase of 4% from July.

Eric Brown, Dataium CEO stated, "Eighteen months ago, rising gas prices scared consumers away from the fuel-inefficient truck and SUV segments. Today, these same consumers appear to have no fear of gas hikes and push on toward the 'big car' of their dreams."

Through proprietary data collection and analytics, Dataium aggregates and measures billions of auto shopper behavioral events from over 20 million active auto shoppers across a diverse network of thousands of automotive websites each month. Dataium not only provides data and research on auto shopper/buyer behavior nationally, but by specific makes, models, vehicle segments, and markets. The national report is available for download at www.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, sales forecasting, 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.

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 over 20 million active auto shoppers monthly. The company supports cutting-edge data collection and reporting technology; VisiCogn® Knowledge Center, VisiCogn® In-Market Lead Solutions, and is also known for its ASI™ index. For more information, visit www.dataium.com, email: info@dataium.com, or call 877-896-DATA (3282).

09/20/12