Each data source has seen its own trend. On Twitter, levels remained steady through 2021 before increasing across this year. Reddit also saw a stable 2021, and while it saw a rise at the start of 2022, things have changed little since. Forums were following the same trajectory as Reddit until March 2022, but numbers have steadily fallen since.

What this tells us is that consumers have lost interest in discussing cars on forums, many of which are more private than Reddit and Twitter, often needing people to sign up before they can post or even read the forum’s content.

It’s also clear that Twitter is an increasingly popular place to talk about buying a car.

Next we wanted to dig into what the conversation was actually like. We used our emotion analysis technology to see what people were feeling when they posted about cars.

Anger topped the list by far with the big drivers of this conversation around cost, time-consuming mechanical problems, and poor customer experience.

While many of these angry mentions were found on forums, when we looked more closely at Instagram, joyful mentions were far more prominent. Here people were posting positively about their vehicles, with users uploading photos of their cars in front of beautiful backdrops.

The big purchasing topics

Speaking of conversation topics, let’s segment the data by them instead to see what are the biggest drivers of the car-buying conversation.

As you’d expect, price comes top, particularly as many face rising costs of living. Second is the model of the car as people discuss what car will suit them and their needs best.

Reflecting rising concerns around the environment, e-cars are a bigger conversation topic than used cars. We’re still a long way off electric cars becoming the norm, but there’s a good chunk of consumers who are considering them as an option when looking for a new car.

We also looked at how these categories differ by language.

Price still remains supreme but there are some notable differences further down the list.

For example, for German speakers, e-cars are a huge topic. This reflects the popularity of electric vehicles in Germany, where e-cars make up a relatively high percentage of the cars on the road, especially compared to the US.

Having said that, e-cars and sustainability are seen in every language group’s top five, showing that even if people are ready to make the electric switch, they’re still looking for ways to make greener purchases if they can.

Who needs their own car anyway?

To finish, let’s make a quick detour. Our research discovered that car sharing is growing in interest, and is currently at its peak.

One of the major drivers of this conversation is the pandemic causing people to use car sharing to avoid getting on public buses and trains. We also found that Gen-Z is behind 69% of this topic, making car sharing a must-watch topic for the automotive industry.

Want more automotive consumer insights?

Our latest (and free) report Consumer Trends in the Automotive Industry, is chock full of even more data and analysis on:

• The car features people most consider when buying a car
• How people feel about used cars
• The possibilities of sponsorship

Read it now.

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