May 24, 2019—According to a data analysis report from the software company Womply, the Friday of Memorial Day weekend is the biggest day of the year for auto service businesses, Americans spend 73 percent more money on their vehicles than on a typical day.
Auto repair shops, specifically, see an average of $1,840 in revenue on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, a 41 percent increase over a typical day.
Ratchet+Wrench spoke with Brad Plothow, vice president of Brand and Communications at Womply, to learn more about the study’s results.
Q. How were these data points curated?
A. We use transaction data to power our software, one of the really interesting things and applications of that data is that we can understand the interactions between consumers and those businesses. We actually have data for over 10M small businesses of all different categories. What we did here, is if you look at every single day of the year for relevant auto service categories, what are the best days of the year? We looked at daily transactions each day of the year and looked for the spikes and valleys. We found that, unsurprisingly, the weekend of Memorial Day is really big for auto services, and the Friday before is especially huge, as you would expect, as people are getting ready to go out on the road.
Q. Were these findings different regionally?
A. Definitely, if you look at auto repair specifically, and just look at the boost of revenue versus an average day, W. Va, S.D., Conn., and Okla., all saw at least a 90 percent increase in revenue against their average day. Interestingly, these tend to be more landlocked states, folks might be looking to travel, get out of town. You don’t see many coastal states seeing really huge bumps on that day.
Q. Do you see this trend continuing?
A. Yes, the only thing that would change this is if everybody starts driving around in an autonomous Uber car, then people might not be spending as much money from a consumer standpoint, but certainly service businesses would be affected as well. In the near term, people are still largely driving and taking road trips, that has not gone away as an American tradition.
We see consumer spending continuing to do well, especially when the economy is doing well. So if we were to have some sort of economic recession, I think you could see some retraction here. But the theme and the trend certainly seems to be significant.
Full survey can be found here.
