The Auto Market Brief

Consumer sentiment remains one of the most watched economic indicators, but it is only one piece of the consumer story.

In this episode of The Auto Market Brief, host Erin Keating is joined by Kayla Bruun, Head of Economic Analysis at Morning Consult, to examine why sentiment alone does not tell the complete consumer story. They compare Morning Consult’s Index of Consumer Sentiment with its Consumer Health Index, which combines personal financial sentiment with high-frequency labor-market data to provide a more grounded signal of real-time demand.

Looking Beyond Consumer Sentiment
Consumer sentiment measures continue to receive significant attention from economists, investors, and business leaders, but Erin and Kayla explain why sentiment alone rarely tells the complete story. The conversation explores how attitudes, financial health, labor-market conditions, and real-world spending behavior can move on different timelines. Using Morning Consult's Index of Consumer Sentiment and Consumer Health Index as examples, they discuss why broader measures of consumer health often provide a clearer view of underlying demand than sentiment headlines alone.

A Consumer Economy Moving at Different Speeds
The conversation examines the continued divide between income groups and how those differences are shaping spending patterns. While higher-income households have experienced sharper declines in sentiment, they have continued supporting spending in categories such as travel and experiences, even as many become more price conscious and seek savings on everyday purchases. The episode also explores the evolving role of middle-income consumers and recent improvements among certain younger and lower-income segments.

What Price Responses Reveal About Vehicle Demand
Kayla introduces Morning Consult's new price-response indicators, which track whether consumers absorb higher prices, walk away from purchases, or trade down to lower-cost alternatives. For automotive leaders, the data reveals continued vehicle consideration despite rising price sensitivity and greater evidence of trading down. The discussion highlights how replacement demand, affordability pressures, and shifts between new- and used-vehicle purchases may influence automotive demand in the months ahead.

The episode also covers gas prices, inflation, consumer savings, labor-force participation, age-related spending trends, AI-related workplace concerns, vehicle affordability, new- and used-vehicle demand signals, and the indicators industry leaders should monitor over the next six to twelve months.
 
The Auto Market Brief delivers timely data, clear context, and practical insight to help industry leaders make smarter decisions—what's happening now, and what's coming next. 

The Auto Market Brief is powered by Cox Automotive. For more industry insights and expert perspectives, visit our Insights Hub at Cox Automotive Insights.

Creators and Guests

Host
Erin Keating
Erin Keating is an Executive Analyst and Senior Director of Economic and Industry Insights at Cox Automotive. She brings 30 years of professional experience, including 14 years in the automotive industry, providing analysis on market conditions, automaker performance, and consumer demand shaping the economics of the new-vehicle market. Erin spent 10 years with Audi of America, including leading Audi Motorsport North America, informing her perspective on both commercial strategy and competitive dynamics.
Guest
Kayla Bruun
As the Head of Economic Analysis at Morning Consult, Kayla leads analysis of household finance trends and the labor market, leveraging the company’s proprietary, high-frequency data. Prior to joining Morning Consult, Kayla was a key member of the corporate strategy team at telecommunications company SES, where she produced market intelligence and industry analysis of mobility markets. Kayla also served as an economist at IHS Markit, where she covered global services industries, provided price forecasts, produced written analyses, and served as a subject matter expert on client-facing consulting projects. Kayla earned her bachelor’s degree in economics from Emory University, and earned an MBA with a certificate in non-market strategy from Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business.

What is The Auto Market Brief?

The Auto Market Brief, powered by Cox Automotive, breaks down the latest trends and forecasts shaping the automotive industry. The show is hosted by Cox Automotive Executive Analyst Erin Keating, coupling years of experience translating data and trends with the data and industry insights of the largest automotive services and technology provider.

Joined by other Cox Automotive experts and outside guests, you’ll get data-driven insights and industry outlooks from some of the industry’s leading voices.​

Erin Keating:

Welcome to the Auto Market Brief from Cox Automotive. Each episode, our experts and special guests break down the latest trends, insights, and news shaping the automotive market. We'll give you the information that truly matters so you can make smarter decisions and drive your business forward. Hello. Welcome back to The Auto Market Brief.

Erin Keating:

I'm Erin Keating, your host and industry executive analyst here at Cox Automotive. Today, we're looking beyond the familiar headline that consumers feel gloomy, and we're gonna be asking a more useful question, I think, which is what do sentiment, financial health and actual purchase decisions tell us about the durability of consumer demand? Joining me today, I'm excited to have one of our partners, Kayla Bruun. She is with Morning Consult, Head of Economic Analysis, and her work really helps to connect how consumers say they feel with the financial pressures they face and the choices they may ultimately be making. So Kayla, welcome to the show.

Kayla Bruun:

Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here.

Erin Keating:

Of course. Yes. Morning Consult has been a great partner for us. We know that we look at the Consumer Sentiment Index quite a bit. So I want to unpack that index specifically.

Erin Keating:

You guys also have the Consumer Health Index, which I think would be really great to explore, especially in this whole time where we're thinking about confidence and spending and how they don't always move together. And then recently, you all have put together a really interesting index or indicator around US price responses. And I know because of inflation's there, tariffs, etcetera, like how are consumers actually responding when prices rise and when it differs from expectations? So I think that, you know, when we're talking about purchases as consequential as a vehicle, it's important for our audience for sure, to really understand what should they be taking away when they're thinking about, oh my gosh, consumer sentiment is sinking, etcetera. So why don't we kick that off a little bit and just explain Morning Consult's consumer sentiment index because it is different than others, as well as the consumer health index.

Erin Keating:

What does each measure? How do they differ? And why is it useful to look at them together?

Kayla Bruun:

Sure. And that's a great way to think about it. I'm really thinking about the two and the way they fit together. Our Index of Consumer Sentiment or the ICS, we sometimes call it, that one I think is the most accessible to sort of newcomers to Morning Consult and our data because we actually ask the exact same questions as the University of Michigan does for their sentiment index. But we do it on a daily basis all around the world.

Kayla Bruun:

So in The US, we ask about 5,000 people daily. And then we ask in 40 plus countries, we have indexes of consumer sentiment as well. So it's a ton of data being collected every day about how consumers feel about their personal finances and the economy. If you're not so familiar with the University of Michigan's index and our index too with the five questions we are the five sub components that we cover, there's a couple questions on personal on how you feel about personal finances, both currently and looking ahead into the future. There's a question on current buying conditions.

Kayla Bruun:

And then there's again another pair on more general business conditions, both near term and longer term farther out. So it's both near term and long term personal finances and the economy overall. What it does not specifically ask about in those questions is the labor market. Of course, that indirectly feeds into it. But we don't have an explicit question on the labor market.

Kayla Bruun:

So that's one way that we differ from the conference board's confidence index in that they actually do cover the labor market.

Erin Keating:

Yeah. And then the Consumer Health Index actually continues to It pulls even more information up against the Consumer Index, correct? So tell us a little bit about that.

Kayla Bruun:

Yes, exactly. And actually, you know, me, I was a little bit prefacing that with mentioning the labor market because what we found, and you talked about this a little bit too, when there are these periods of time when spending and sentiment are not lining up, oftentimes the difference is something going on in the labor market that can kind of bridge the gap between what we're seeing with sentiment and what we're actually seeing with spending. So that was sort of the motivation behind creating the Consumer Health Index. The way that we built it is we drew in one component from Sentiment that we saw had a closer alignment with spending, the personal finances, current conditions one that was more closely linked to spending. And then we supplemented that with our high frequency unemployment data, but put together in a transformation that actually benchmarked to government spending growth.

Kayla Bruun:

So it's intended to be a little bit more grounded in what consumers are actually doing. But it draws upon that sentiment data as well as our labor market data to arrive at that signal for real time demand. So what is the latest? I I know we look at

Erin Keating:

this daily, as you said, and I like to sort of term the Consumer sentiment index is a little bit of like a mood indicator. But to your point that health really brings in like, but people will say one thing, they do another. What's the latest headline, the clearest headline that you have?

Kayla Bruun:

Yeah, that's a great way to think about it. And looking at them together, I think, is a good way to understand what's going on. I think of the sentiment index or the index of consumer sentiment as it's almost like the canary in the coal mine. It is very volatile. And that can be a good thing as an early warning sign, but it also can be a little bit of a false alarm when it comes to what actually happens in the real economy.

Kayla Bruun:

So one feature of the Consumer Health Index is it's slower moving. That labor market component actually is ingested on a lag. So things that happened in the labor market a few months ago are filtering through to spending we see today. So that's an important thing to keep in mind when you're analyzing it. So but what we've seen with the two together is, yeah, sentiment has been going down this year.

Kayla Bruun:

The Consumer Health Index has been going down as well. That being said, it's been kind of a slower, steadier decline. And it was from a position of relative strength last year in 2025. The other thing that's really important to think about, I would say, when you're looking at the consumer health index to understand the economy, I will always look at it by income groups because there's such a difference there. And that's kind of so important to understand what's going on with spending at the aggregate level today.

Erin Keating:

Yeah, I was going to mention that because I know that, you know, again, we use this tool quite a bit, and it's really helpful that you can really kind of pull any audience as well. So it's really, you collect so much background information on the individuals that are responding that you could certainly go in there and piece it apart by income levels. You can piece it apart by individuals who are actually in the automotive market right now, etcetera, etcetera. So what are some of the differences, I guess, you would say that when you're looking at that income level that you've seen over the last, I don't know, couple of months?

Kayla Bruun:

Well, it's been interesting in terms of both the gap, which people are familiar with. We have a K shaped economy. That is still a thing. And I think it's an important piece to understanding why spending has held up so well this year, because there is so much residual strength among high income consumers that they're able to kind of support the aggregate spending levels that we're seeing. Because a lot of the spending growth has been coming from them.

Kayla Bruun:

But the direction that the high income versus the low income lines have been trending is also very interesting. We've actually seen a more rapid decline in high income sentiment, especially just recently, which, you know, on the one hand, everyone was kind of moving together with sentiment when it came to gas prices initially spiking and recovering and then climbing back again. So that is a factor. And it's been a major factor with sentiment all year. Because people are bothered by that.

Kayla Bruun:

It hurts their sentiment very much. Everyone notices and everyone feels bad about it. But the difference is high income adults, does it really affect their ability to book their vacation? Not really or not so far. But just recently, actually, yeah, high income adults have had, like, a little bit more of a rapid decline in sentiment, whereas lower income adults have actually had a a bit of recovery in their consumer health index, which is interesting.

Kayla Bruun:

It it actually I haven't fully proven this out, but it it's the signs point to the AI anxiety potentially being a contributing factor there. Disproportionately actually is, you know, it's more visible to high income adults. It's also actually, at this point so far, impacting them more at work according to our track. Right.

Erin Keating:

That's really interesting. So I'm curious, the have certain spending categories suffered? I mean, are you able to see where they're really thinking about their spending and depending on where they are in the income brackets?

Kayla Bruun:

Yeah, that's been really interesting. And that's actually where pulling in our price response indicators becomes a little bit helpful to understanding different categories and how consumers are responding to prices. When it comes to gas prices, there's kind of and essentials in general, but really so much with gas. What was interesting was when we had that big spike in gas prices, when I underlying spike in gas prices. I mean, the consumer response is that they have to absorb it.

Kayla Bruun:

We did hear some people saying they were cutting back on driving to the extent possible. But if you need to drive to work, you need to drive to work. You need to, you know, pay for gas. So that did have a bit of a ripple effect to other categories, but it varied a bit by income. There was sort of that strange dynamic of consumer sentiment tanking, high income adults still kind of splurging on travel and and where there was kind of a lag between the actual sentiment impact and the spending response.

Kayla Bruun:

But for the most part, we actually have seen an increase in trading down even among high income adults, but it's more been on essentials. It's kind of a weird dichotomy where they are price conscious because they feel bad about the economy, but they're kind of not so much so that they actually have to compromise on like price sensitivity and backing out of a vacation. They'd rather buy cheaper groceries or something like that. Like that's that's kind what's coming across in the data. It's funny you say that because

Erin Keating:

I think during the pandemic, we also saw this pattern where because people were feeling so unsure about what was going to happen, that they were, you know, when they came out of it, finally, it was like experiences, you know, and like all the things that they couldn't do. Like, you want to hold on to those things that are going to at least make you feel good, right? Or make you feel like you're getting something for your money, if you will. So vacations and even cars, I think, you know, again, we've been talking recently, and again, we refer to your indexes quite a bit, that yes, like the income striation can really show you what the difference is of how well, you know, someone who's $150,000 or more in a household is feeling versus someone who's like under 50,000 is feeling. And we see it in the data for car sales.

Erin Keating:

So car sales have actually sort of crisscrossed where we're seeing more owners now are in the high income group and less owners. You know, they're more moving out of individuals that are under the 50 the middle seems to be fairly even. Haven't seen a ton of variability in the middle income individuals. But below 50 and above one fifty are sort of, you know, if we only if you go very basic, those are the extremes. Have you seen anything similar about the middle?

Erin Keating:

Because we do talk about the K shaped a lot. So we talk a lot about the very price sensitive and those that are not price sensitive at all. But the middle is probably where most people land at least. Right?

Kayla Bruun:

Yeah. Although in our data in in our data set, we our basic definition is from the 50 k to a 100 k. So, you know, maybe that's not the true middle anymore. Sure. You know, kept it that way for consistency's sake.

Kayla Bruun:

That being said, the middle income group, it's been kind of interesting. They at different points in our tracking, they will align. They're typically not doing their own thing. They're typically aligning with one or the other, but it's not always above or below. Just recently, their trend with Sentiment and the Consumer Health Index has been kind of like a slightly less dramatic tracking of the high income trend.

Kayla Bruun:

They've more resembled the high income group, and it's really been that income group that's been having a bit of a different trajectory. But yeah, for the most part, they sit in the middle and they will move up and down to at different points. It'll be like, wow, they're tracking pretty close to low income. They're rising up, catching up to high income. Right in the middle, but behavior wise, shift wise, recently more similar to high income adults.

Erin Keating:

And have you taken a look at it recently by age group? Just out of curiosity. That

Kayla Bruun:

is actually an interesting segment too. And that's somewhere where we've seen in our Consumer Health Index, I've been keeping the past couple of years, I've been keeping a close eye on sort of that youngest demographic. I think in our dashboard, we showed as like 18 to 29 year olds. Because typically with our sentiment data, what historically it's been, younger adults are more optimistic, older adults are more pessimistic, especially when inflation comes into the equation. Older adults are more bothered, younger adults are less bothered.

Kayla Bruun:

But what was interesting is, especially last year or the last couple of years, we saw kind of a switch. In 2025, really, we saw a strong switch where the youngest adults, because of how much difficulty new entrants to the labor market were having or early career individuals were having, the low hire, low fire, like they just weren't getting hired. There was a lot more pessimism there and it kind of flipped the trend. But this year, the last few months, we've actually started to see some recovery again. So there's a little more hopefulness and improving sentiment and even some improving labor conditions, it looks like for that youngest

Erin Keating:

And again, to think of, we've just been recently looking at sales for vehicles, and it's like the baby boomers are definitely driving a lot more of the vehicle sales even. But of course, that's individuals. I think my colleague said, you know, it must be nice that, you know, they didn't start having to even pay for, like, cable and TV and everything until they're well in their forties, you know, or like internet, know, things like that. So there were so many costs. You know, they bought their house for $23,000, you know, thirty years ago and now are being able to experience what that's like being a baby boomer.

Erin Keating:

And that's, of course, I think we're just about to see the last bit of the baby boomer turning 62 or something like that. So finally, like retirement age, you know, is officially like the youngest baby boomer. So it's interesting to see that you're seeing the same growth or same patterns with age across consumer sentiment.

Kayla Bruun:

You see A and I do. 65 plus cohort, they're right up there with the in our consumer health. And I was surprised by this. It's the youngest and the oldest in the Consumer Health Index that have had recovery lately. I think the higher likelihood of having invested assets has probably benefited them.

Kayla Bruun:

That's a tailwind for them as well, a little bit of that wealth effect coming through.

Erin Keating:

Sure. The wealth effect. If you're worried, pulling out right now, you're already kind of there. I'm a Gen Xer, so I like to say, I'm like the angry Gen Xer, right? So I'm like, Oh my gosh, I'm so close.

Erin Keating:

Yet if anything really goes wrong right now, it's gonna really screw me. They're like, AI, who cares, honey? Yeah, right. Exactly. So the price let's talk a little bit more about the price response indicator, because I know that this is a relatively new measure that you've got going on.

Erin Keating:

So walk us through, like, the framework around that. And I think it's it's you call it price surprise, price sensitivity, trading down. I mean, can you walk us through a little more detail there?

Kayla Bruun:

I know there are a bunch of them, but that kind of stems from the design of the framework. So it really the way we do it in our surveys is we start with a question asking whether people purchased or considered purchasing across various categories in the past month. So we're trying to get at observed recent behavior or, you know, observed reported behavior. And then, yeah, we have a matrix of 20 or so categories spanning as much of the consumer wallet as we could, without having too exhaustive of a list. And then following that question, whether they considered and did not purchase it or they did purchase it, we ask about those outcomes as well.

Kayla Bruun:

And so for instance, if they did purchase it, we ask, Okay, was it was it the price? Was it at or below the price you expected? We call that a normal buying experience. Or was it more than they expected to pay? So for instance, when gas prices went way up, we had a huge jump in that price absorbers group.

Kayla Bruun:

The one who said, yes, I purchased it, but I paid more than I expected because they were surprised by the prices. And then if they didn't purchase it, and this is what I think is kind of cool about the price response indicators because we're also capturing lost demand. So we asked about if you didn't purchase it, was it because the price was too high? We call that price sensitivity. Or was it unavailable?

Kayla Bruun:

Was it like supply constrained? And then, oh, and also this is part of the if you did purchase it, was it a trade down? And that we kind of think of as, well, I mean, it's trading down, but it's also kind of a compromise demand a little bit where they didn't pay the initial full price they saw, they went out and found something cheaper with a little more effort. So those are kind of the indicators. And then they have implications both for demand and for getting an early read on inflation.

Kayla Bruun:

Because we ask mid month and then we don't see the inflation. Oh, okay. Right. Yeah. So when we have a couple ways of getting the inflation read across different categories.

Kayla Bruun:

On the one hand, we stack up all the price impacted categories, price sensitive trading down price absorbers. We call that price impacted. That aligns pretty well with inflation for some categories. And then we also have, as you mentioned, the price surprise index, which is for other categories. This one has a little bit of a tighter correlation where it's basically the net share of buyers who were surprised by higher than expected prices.

Kayla Bruun:

Okay. So yes, so in that way, we kind of are trying to fully capture all the full range of outcomes of a potential purchase and understand, you know, what the goings on behind it.

Erin Keating:

Sure. Anything you've seen in purchase indicators around high priced tickets items? I mean, I know recently I've actually been, again, using Morning Consult even to look into reputation and such of automakers versus airlines versus major appliance companies. Know, things to me that were like, those are probably decisions or, you know, once in a while decisions someone's making and prices might be shocking them. Have you seen anything jump out at you with those categories, especially, of course, automotive, which is what our customers are interested in?

Kayla Bruun:

Yeah. Yeah. And I was looking at our we we track both new and used vehicles across these indicators. So I did want to get a sense of what the story was there. Speaking generally first, though, across categories, the biggest movement we saw was when what happened with gas prices.

Kayla Bruun:

Was a little bit dropping a bomb in the price response indicators. Sure. And we did see a little bit of a spillover effect into other categories. We saw increases in price sensitivity for a lot of discretionary categories over the summer. We've also seen kind of a slow and steady upward trend towards trading down across a lot of categories.

Kayla Bruun:

Both of those are the case for our auto indicators as well. But what's been interesting there is that we've also this year seen an increasing consideration for those categories, which is kind of interesting. So it's in that way, it's a little bit offset. I would say it seems people haven't been discouraged from considering buying a car. And yeah, we can't track down.

Kayla Bruun:

Maybe people are thinking, now I need an electric car or something like that. Yeah, right. This data set doesn't isolate that signal. But there is still interest in considering a car, though the outcomes are clearly having some constraint associated with prices, whether it's trade We out or

Erin Keating:

know that the replacement age of a vehicle is getting substantially older, right? I mean, we discuss a lot in our team that we feel like we might be reaching like peak vehicle age. And when you're getting to that place, I mean, this does sort of explain why the demand continues to be very relevant in the automotive industry is because if you're holding onto a car and we're getting close to twelve, thirteen year old vehicles, mean, I there's naturally, they need to be replaced. Now, whether they're replaced with a new vehicle or a used vehicle, to your point, maybe that's where the trade down instinct is coming from. It's like, okay, I'm gonna replace this 13 year old vehicle or this 10 year old vehicle with another used vehicle.

Erin Keating:

And or I might go from having a three row SUV to a two row or a small SUV to a car. Perhaps that's where you're seeing the trade down sort of trigger for automotive, I would imagine.

Kayla Bruun:

Interesting. Yeah. And we're seeing it within new vehicles as well. So it's people saying they bought a new vehicle. So I think it is probably a mix of either switching to used or it does seem like a fair amount might be staying within the, you know, within new vehicles, but, yeah, smaller car or something like that.

Kayla Bruun:

So just out of

Erin Keating:

curiosity, mean, again, going back to, like, automakers, dealers, lenders, these are the folks that are listening in on us. Which price response indicators provide the strongest early read on demand, do you think? Is it is it something from the price the purchase response indicator? Or are you looking elsewhere within your data to see where early demand signals might be for for that category?

Kayla Bruun:

That's a great question. And it does vary by category. I know for vehicles specifically, have kind of an interesting dynamic where we saw when price sensitivity for new vehicles goes up, then a few months later, purchases for used vehicles go up. So there's some

Erin Keating:

Sure.

Kayla Bruun:

There's some specific category level dynamics there that are kind of interesting. For overall demand, Consumer Health Index does tend to have a pretty good correlation with big ticket items. A lot of the time, though, there's different lags associated with certain types of purchases and that changes in that macro demand. Gotcha.

Erin Keating:

Okay. So over the next six to twelve months, what would you tell the consumer that the consumer is generally weakening? You know, is that is that what you would see? And what would you instead suggest that households are adapting to and continuing to spend despite low like, where where are you thinking we should be considering the consumers?

Kayla Bruun:

Yeah. It's looking like because the Consumer Health Index has been trending pretty steadily down and there's not a clear sign of a rebound, I'm sort of on the watch for spending to continue to follow that pattern and slow down. It's not a dramatic drop off, but it's it does seem like a gradual weakening is is currently the direction it would look like we're heading towards. I think the factor really to watch is the labor market. I'm also gonna keep my eye on consumer savings.

Kayla Bruun:

That's been pretty low, a bit depleted. So to the extent that that continues staying low or bounces back a little bit, that's another kind of spending factor that I'm kind of keeping The labor market, whether that breaks or recovers, that's kind of the thing to watch.

Erin Keating:

Right. Gotcha. And are you seeing the labor market not just where unemployment sits and like how many jobs we're adding or taking away, but that labor force participation rate, like that seems to be another key metric that we keep an eye on?

Kayla Bruun:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's tough to Yeah, just looking at a jobs report, seeing the headline unemployment rate, there's so many times in history you'd look at that and say like, this is a great report. You know, the last few weeks seeing that headline unemployment rate so low. So labor force participation, yes, it bounced back a little the last time, but it's not in a great place.

Kayla Bruun:

And so recovery there would be constructive.

Erin Keating:

Big thing. Constructive, yes. Well, and we know that the Fed is meeting this week, so of course, we'll get some read on whether interest rates are going to get impacted, or at least the Fed fund rate getting impacted. Well, any last I mean, as you noted, you are an economist. Any last sort of broader perspective you have for us, considering everything that you get to look at every day with Morning Consult and just what you look like look at generally as an economist?

Kayla Bruun:

I think we covered a lot of the hot stories. Mean, I big thing, I mean, I guess the other thing I mentioned the labor market, but that's partly out of fatigue of having mentioned gas prices as the thing to But watch for so because we spoke so much about sentiment, like I should probably mention that that really has been, if you look at, you know, over different periods of history, gas prices and sentiment have correlated to various degrees. But this year, it's been extremely high. It's upwards of like a point nine something correlation. So Oh, really?

Kayla Bruun:

Okay. Yeah. And gas prices, economists, myself included, will sometimes be like, oh, yeah, it went up a lot, but it can go down. But the more we see this sustained high energy prices, the more it really becomes more of elastic threat. So gas prices, fuel prices, energy prices, and the way that may or may not filter through to inflation, depending on how long it stays elevated, that of course is another factor in addition to

Erin Keating:

We need to Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. You can't deny it. I mean, I said the same thing when the whole gas prices started going up.

Erin Keating:

Know, the one thing I kept saying was like, it's the genie that goes back in the bottle. But you're right. The longer that it's sustained sitting here and I know Jeremy and I in our last episode were talking about how diesel has just it's really crossed over a threshold that is starting to which will impact everything, right? That really starts to get it through core inflation. So, okay.

Erin Keating:

Well, I mean, you know, these are the things we're keeping an eye on. We're glad that we have morning consult that we can certainly consult every day and look at how what the mood ring is saying for the day. So fingers crossed things from a mood perspective continue to or potentially start moving in the right direction. And especially, we'll continue to watch that Consumer Health Index. But thanks, Kayla.

Erin Keating:

I mean, I think I've taken away that it's you know, these these sentiments are important signals, but it's not always the the whole consumer story. And again, people will report doing one thing, and then they'll behave in a different way. And I again, I really love that price response indicator because it is giving us that second level of, you know, what are they doing? Because I don't think it's that they're not purchasing, you know? We are seeing a lot of people still making some significant decisions.

Erin Keating:

The automotive market is doing quite well right now considering. So thank you so much for being with us and for continuing, you and your team, continue to provide us certainly with a lot of really great data.

Kayla Bruun:

Thank you so much. This was such a fun conversation. Of course. So thanks to all

Erin Keating:

of you all for listening to The Auto Market Brief. Be sure to like, subscribe and share the show with your friends and colleagues. As always, remember to check out all of our insights and updates at coxautoinc.com. And stay tuned to the Auto Market Brief for the high notes in our economy, the headlines that matter across the industry, and more conversations like this that help us make sense of the market. Take care.

Erin Keating:

Thanks for joining us on this episode of the Auto Market Brief. To stay up to date with all the latest news and perspectives from our team of experts, be sure to visit our insights hub at coxautoinc.com.