Analysis on Automobile consumers’ satisfaction(1)
               Overall comparison between Domestic-Imports

  Rapid growth of imported cars has continued to march. The bull of imported cars is continuing. And the reason can be found from consumers’ evaluation on imported cars, in which Imports is one step higher than domestic cars in terms of quality and service. In the overall comparative analysis for this, Imports had unilateral superiority in terms of product quality, while the service aspect was going by shoulder to shoulder, and Imports appeared to be superior in comprehensive evaluation for brand

  Marketing Insight, automobile specialist research firm, has conducted large-scale syndicated studies (101,821 sample size in 2014) in July every year since 2002 on "Customer satisfaction and experienced quality of car". This study has diverse divisions of evaluation. But the evaluation target, evaluated value and ownership period are different to one another, making it impossible to compare directly. However, there is a common question to ask "How to evaluate on 10-point scale in a comprehensive manner" at the end of all the evaluations. In here, the consumers who purchased new car within one year (A/S uses visit within one year) compare the evaluations on each area comprehensively.

  The evaluation results of the survey respondents in 2014 for "Service", "Product" and "Overall" areas are presented by purchasers of domestic cars and imported cars [Table 1]. Each area is made into two divisions, and the figures presented in [Table 1] is Satisfaction rate, which is the percentage of consumers who gave 8 or more points in the 10-point scale.

  When looking into the satisfaction rate in the six divisions of the purchasers of imported cars and domestic cars, domestic is lagging behind in the five divisions with just a slight difference winning in the after-sales service, while having the largest inferiority in Product area. Imported cars displayed the satisfaction rates of over 50% in all six divisions, while Domestic cars were below 50% in the three divisions and recorded 30% range (38%) in the brand evaluation.

  The greatest weakness of domestic cars is in Product. Domestic had the largest gap of 23%p in the evaluation on design·performance·feature of new car, and 20%p second largest gap in terms of products reliability (Problem, Defect). This result demonstrates that many consumers are very much satisfied with the product attributes and reliability of new car after switching to imported cars.

  Also, Imports purchasers answered that they have ‘no stress personally on Discomfort, Anxiety, Loss and Anger’ (13%p higher), and ‘satisfied with overall aspect of the maker (brand) such as Sales, Service and Quality’ (17%p higher). This also indicates that Imports purchasers are satisfied with the products and services provided by Imports makers in overall sense.

  In contrast, Domestic cars are ahead of Imports only in after-sales service (2%p) among the service area, while getting behind in the sales service (8%p).

  When summarizing all the above, the dominance of imported cars is firm in the aspect of customer satisfaction, and the key is in the Product. The outstanding product reliability of imported cars along with excellence in attractiveness as Product is leading to competitive advantage. It is also significantly higher in satisfaction with maker (brand) in addition to this. Unless domestic cars can achieve catching two rabbits of product and brand, the sprint of imported cars will get more momentum.

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