Car Buyers Prefer Dealers Who Don’t Dicker : Consumers: A new study claims that 68% of customers surveyed said they ‘dread’ the negotiation process.

Car dealers who skip the haggling and make their best offer on the sticker price are better liked and busier than traditional dealers, the author of a study on such dealerships said Monday.

J. D. Power & Associates, the Agoura Hills marketing firm best known for its customer satisfaction index of new cars, studied customer attitudes about these no-dicker dealerships. Ninety-two percent of them said their sales have increased since they adopted the system.

Among the differences customers like is avoiding the negotiation process with salespeople while trying to sort through a maze of rebates and incentives, said Doris Ehlers, the J. D. Power account executive who did the study.

Ehlers, who examined 24 one-price dealerships in April and May, said she hears daily from more dealers who have adopted the pricing strategy.

“I think there are dealers who are very intrigued about selling without negotiation,” she said. “A lot of people have gotten involved as a philosophy after they found it worked very well in special sales and they said ‘Why don’t we expand this?’ ”

The National Automobile Dealers Assn. said the number of dealers using one-price, no-negotiation sales tactics is growing, but still represents a small percentage of the 23,000 auto dealerships in the United States.

“Dealers sell the way they do because it works,” association spokesman Ted Orme said. “They are real wizards at local marketing and they do what works.”

Ehlers said 68% of customers surveyed for her study said they “dreaded” the negotiation process of buying a car.

“Thirty-two percent is not a number to be sneezed at,” she said of those who like to dicker. “Perhaps they enjoy playing the game and winning.”

Dave Towell, who owns a Cadillac dealership in Akron, Ohio, said he is unconvinced that one-price stickers are the wave of the future.

“I’m not saying the process can’t work, but as long as there is a trade-in, there is haggling,” he said. The J. D. Power study showed 54% of one-price dealers still haggle on trade-ins.

In the luxury car market, Towell said attractive lease plans are substituting for one-price programs.

Ehlers said no-negotiation car prices are like any other retail item: Subject to frequent change.

The J. D. Power study showed 33% of one-price dealerships changed prices as factory incentive programs changed, 29% changed based on inventory conditions, 14% changed weekly, 14% changed to sell more cars and 10% changed every two or three days.

Ehlers said the recent move to one-price dealing was prompted by Saturn’s no-haggling strategy. The hugely successful General Motors Corp. subsidiary offers take-it-or-leave-it pricing.

“It will not be the evolution of the car business,” said Towell, the Cadillac dealer. “The retail business is not going to go to it unless factories go to one price and set the profit margins.”

Ehlers is conducting a separate study on factory-backed programs like Saturn and a single-price program Ford Motor Co. has on four of its subcompact Escort models.