Below are some additional data points from a recent consumer credit trends study conducted by Equifax. The initial release highlighted trends in awareness of credit amongst Millennials and Baby Boomers, as well as affordability expectations of Prime and Subprime shoppers. The online survey was conducted by Equifax during February 2018 and included more than 1,000 participants. Other notable findings:

Efforts to Negotiate

There is a noticeable drop in just how much shoppers try to negotiate with the dealer between new and used vehicles. Prime shoppers of new vehicles provide a "moderate to great" amount of negotiation 72% of the time, but this drops to just 47% for used vehicles. Subprime shoppers of new vehicles provide a "moderate to great" amount of negotiation 62% of the time, but this drops to just 44% for used vehicles. What's more, 59% of Prime Millennials offer "moderate to great" negotiation effort versus 58% of Prime Baby Boomers. However, this is the opposite for Subprime Millennials (50%) versus Subprime Baby Boomers (53%).

Key Takeaway: There is a wider gap between those that try and do not try to negotiate new and used vehicles for prime shoppers, compared with subprime shoppers. Also, Millennial Prime shoppers do more negotiating than their Baby Boomer counterparts while this trend is switched for Subprime shoppers.

Time Spent Online Shopping

When it comes to the amount of time spent online shopping for a vehicle, there again is a slight difference between Prime Millennials and Boomers versus that of Subprime Millennials and Boomers. For Prime shoppers, Millennials average 8.6 hours online versus 9.1 hours for Boomers. However, this is opposite for Subprime, where Millennials average 9.9 hours compared with 9.1 hours for Boomers.

Key Takeaway: While the numbers do not represent a wide disparity, the data show that Subprime Millennials spend more time online shopping, whereas Prime Boomers spend more time shopping online.

"Knowing this data, dealers and lenders can better design targeted offers, promotions and incentives, either in an online environment or other media, depending on their known customer," said Rebecca Kritzman, Senior Director, Automotive Marketing at Equifax. "It all starts with having the right data and truly understanding your customer, and the solutions introduced by Equifax are designed to help dealers and lenders gain a better foothold on the finer intricacies of each shopper to maximize each transaction opportunity."