NASHVILLE, Tenn. -

Dataium has discovered that its May Automotive Shopper Intensity Index produced the first decline since January, partly due to consumers staying in market longer than previous months and extending the buying cycle from between 30 and 45 days to 60 days.

In fact, Dataium contends last month’s  seasonally adjusted annualized rate for new-vehicle sales may have been much worse if fleet sales hadn’t accounted for more than percent of sales in May.

Will Perry, Dataium’s director of business intelligence stated, “We have been seeing the ASI soften for several months, highlighting longer term concerns for the overall market.”

But there were some bright spots.

Although Toyota dealer websites saw slight declines in visitors and searches in May, Dataium indicated leads for the automaker grew 5 percent from the previous month allowing it to regain the top spot and rank the highest in ASI of all manufacturers.

Analysts noted fellow Japanese automaker Nissan, aided by its National Tent Event sales campaign, saw its leads grow 14 percent from the previous month, which ushered its rank to second.

Conversely, the firm also pointed out inventory searches and leads on Ford’s dealer websites fell by 9 percent and 8 percent respectively, dragging the domestic automaker down to third.

Dataium continued on by mentioning Toyota’s winning streak continued for the fourth straight month with the Toyota Camry ranking highest in shopper intensity for new vehicles.

Bolstered by its annual sales blitz, analysts found Toyota’s RAV4, Corolla and Prius joined the Camry ranking in the top 10 of new vehicles with the highest ASI.

A redesign, coupled with rebates and incentives on the Nissan Altima, helped vault the model to second, according to the firm.

Moving along with its latest report, Dataium acknowledged the current economic climate, including concerns regarding the European Union, may have begun to impact the high-end vehicle segment.

Analysts said a number of luxury models, including the Hyundai Equus, Audi A7, Jaguar XF and BMW 335i received the lowest ASI ranking of new vehicles in May.

However, Dataium contends a number of luxury OEMs foresaw the trend and increased their sales and marketing efforts to successfully combat the downturn. For instance, the firm noted that leads for Infiniti grew by 17 percent from the previous month, driven by its decision to have a spring sales event this year.

“This month, the impact of new models, sales events, and incentives were apparent with Toyota, Nissan and Infiniti showing strength in a declining market,” Dataium chief executive officer Eric Brown said. “Congrats to these makes for correctly anticipating the changes in the marketplace and responding accordingly.”

Through proprietary data collection and analytics, Dataium aggregates and measures billions of auto shopper behavioral events from a database of more than 100 million active shoppers across a network of diverse of thousands of auto websites.

To request complete access to Dataium’s ASI predictive modeling tool on future consumer demand by make, model, trim level, segment, region and market, visit www.dataium.com/contact, or call the firm at (877) 896-3282.