A year ago, if you were to consider used-car shoppers familiar with certified pre-owned, just under three-fourths of them would have expressed a positive opinion about CPO.

This year? That jumps to 82 percent, according to the 2015 Autotrader CPO Study.

Or, as Isabelle Helms said during her presentation at last week’s CPO Forum, “perceptions of CPO are going through the roof.”

Helms, who is vice president of research and market intelligence at Cox Automotive, went over the findings of this study in great detail during her Nov. 17 presentation at Used Car Week.

Part of that included the great opportunity that exists in CPO.

You might even say that begins with bread-and-butter of CPO supply: off-lease inventory, which Helms said is at an all-time high. Citing Manheim Consulting data, her presentation shows off-lease inventory reaching a trajectory of 4 million units towards the end of the decade.

Another key point of her presentation, though: With all this incoming, will demand keep pace? Again, the potential is there for that happen. Citing Manheim Consulting, the expectation is for annual CPO sales to be at 3 million in 2017.

But even so, CPO has some untapped resources.

Namely, used-car shoppers.

The presentation indicates that 75 percent of new-car shoppers were familiar with CPO in 2014, a number that has since risen to 77 percent.

But only 45 percent of used shoppers were familiar with CPO last year. And while there has been improvement, familiarity is still only at 49 percent.  

So, when you consider the numbers shared at the beginning of this story, it’s understandable why Helms emphasized that the “big opportunity for CPO lives among used-car shoppers.”

And here’s another nugget that illustrates the potential among the used-car shopper: consideration for CPO has climbed from 50 percent in 2014 to 68 percent this year.

Not to mention, 82 percent said they would be open to “moving up” to a certified car if the conditions were right.  

So, which of these used-car shoppers are most ideal for moving to CPO? More on that later.