Inject feelings into facts
The research phase, traditionally a rational and time-consuming process of reading reviews and visiting showrooms, has become conversational, continuous and convenient. People now get AI to do the legwork: comparing models, synthesizing expert and user reviews, and getting the answers to questions you’d have previously asked at the dealership back in seconds.
Yet research has never been purely logical. We use data to justify what our hearts have already decided. Family, friends and online communities still act as emotional validators, confirming that our dream is reasonable – or aspirational enough to justify.
Large language models (LLMs) can make this process efficient, but they risk sanitizing it. A purely rational AI advisor might focus on price or MPG, missing the emotional context that makes a driver choose one car brand over another.
A more joyful experience
The moment of buying a car is one of life’s most emotionally charged: a blend of excitement, anxiety, and validation. But too often, what should be fun is weighed down with frustration and friction: forms, finance, and follow-up calls.
AI can smooth the mechanics AND heighten the magic. Adaptive websites that learn from each interaction can guide buyers seamlessly to the models and features that matter most. Generative content can make configuration tools feel cinematic rather than functional.
Imagine walking into a dealership where the salesperson already knows your preferences and has your custom-spec model waiting to test drive, because your AI companion booked it for you. Some brands are already there. Tesla’s digital-first model is proving that the line between showroom and screen is dissolving.
The goal isn’t an entirely automated sale. It’s a more joyful one, using intelligence to remove administrative drag while keeping the buyer in their emotional high. Using the showroom experience is an important way to be meaningfully distinctive and to disintermediate AI from the customer relationship. For prestige car brands, the dealership becomes not a sales point but a brand theater that seals a sense of belonging, the final emotional validation before ownership.
Loyalty beyond logic
Once the keys are handed over, the relationship really starts, and an opportunity to turn ownership into advocacy.
AI offers powerful new tools for nurturing loyalty, not through points or promotions, but through memory and meaning. Intelligent systems can remember your favorite content, queries, routes, and preferences to anticipate the next thing that will matter to you. “You asked for the greenest route last month, would you like to try our new eco-mode?” becomes the new kind of conversation and feeds into future product offers like ‘here are cars that use synthetic leather’ at renewal moments.
But memory alone isn’t loyalty. Community is. Car brands that use digital and physical spaces to create events where owners connect, share stories and celebrate identity will create social glue, a store of emotional bonds and a sense of belonging that’s hard to abandon. Nike Run Club, Strava, and even Soho House show how belonging can be a business model. For car brands, the same principle applies: connection through community is not only great for improving retention, it’s a reason in and of itself to buy a car.
Ensuring there is a wide, shared view of a car brand’s value will ensure the brand becomes part of people’s ownership dreams and mitigate the risk of AI companions persuading people to choose competitors.
The road ahead
AI is transforming every stage of the car-buying journey, from the dreams that spark demand to the experiences that sustain it through to purchase and beyond. Building great brands that create a sense of belonging in culture will become more important, not less.
The challenge for automotive marketers is to:
- Use AI to move at the velocity of culture without losing authenticity, meaning and distinctiveness.
- Design journeys that build belonging and stir as much emotion as they are technologically advanced.
- To understand and influence AI and algorithms with brand marketing and not have your brand equity diminished by them.
As AI begins to intermediate more of our choices, the brands that thrive will be those that become part of culture and remain unmistakably, irresistibly human.
This is the second of our two-part series on changes in the car buying journey. You can find Part One: Driving Demand Through Culture here.
