Imported Car A/S Satisfaction Analysis (2)
               - Time or Money, Which One is More Important?

  Imported car A/S is different in many ways from that of domestic cars. Not only differ in A/S related environment and policy, but also differs in consumers. Imported car A/S is mostly done in official service center within the warranty period in many cases. Therefore, free rather than paid, and simple check-up rather than repair are more often. In A/S satisfaction analysis result, imported cars consumers were more sensitive to time than the cost, while having greater dissatisfaction issues on repair from trouble, especially on recurring problem.

  In mega-scale Syndicated Study on ‘Customer satisfaction and Experienced quality of motor vehicles’ (2014 sample size 101,821 persons), conducted by Marketing Insight, an automobile specialty research firm, every year, the consumers (42,618 persons), who had A/S in Official·Authorized·Affiliated service centers (Official only for imported cars) of owned brand within the past 1 year, were asked to evaluate recently received A/S. And then, the evaluation results were analyzed according to the vehicle and the specifics of A/S.

  Users of imported car A/S were different from domestic cars [Figure 1]. In imported cars, there were more in-warranty consumers (41%) than domestic cars (24%), and therefore, there were more free A/S (58%) than domestic cars (33%). In A/S use reason also, there were less trouble and more check-up as repair from trouble at 28% and simple check-up at 72% (domestic car, 36% and 64%, respectively). Re-visit experience from insufficient repair on the same problem had no difference between domestic cars at 13% and imported cars at 14%.

  A/S satisfaction of imported cars in this study was 19 points lower than domestic cars (792 points) at 773 points (1000-point scale). In order to examine getting lower score under which circumstances and conditions, A/S satisfaction scores were expressed on a graph by dividing into ‘within·out of warranty period’, ‘free·paid’, ‘repair with trouble·simple check-up’ and ‘re-visit with same problem or not’ [Figure 1]. In this figure, overall domestic cars had no relatively large differences according to various conditions compared to imported cars.

  On the other hand, imported cars had large differences according to conditions, among which the largest gap condition was found in whether to re-visit A/S Center (652 points) or not (795 points) with the same issue at whopping 143 points gap. Although domestic cars also had significantly lower score in the case (106 points decrease) but imported cars was more sensitive. Visiting A/S center with the reason of trouble was also similar with this. When visiting with trouble, imported car had 81 points lower score (from 797 points to 716 points), while domestic cars just declined by 22 points. This result demonstrates that the owners of imported cars are extremely sensitive to repeated repair with recurring same problem.

  Which aspect of A/S service influence much to A/S satisfaction was examined. A/S satisfaction is configured with ‘Reception/Access’, ‘Facility’, ‘Service process’ and ‘Repair outcome’ of recently received A/S service (21 items in 4 divisions), and A/S evaluation on the automaker experienced in the past one year (6 items in 1 division). In the importance of recently experienced service by 4 division, imported cars had ‘Service process’ as the most important at 41%, followed by ‘Repair outcome’ (35%), ‘Reception/Access’ (20%) and ‘Facility’ (5%), in order [Figure 2]. Domestic cars had ‘Repair outcome’ as the most important at 44%, followed by ‘Service process’ (36%), ‘Reception/Access’ (11%) and ‘Facility’ (9%), in order. Imported cars in ‘Service process’ and ‘Reception/Access’, and domestic cars in ‘Repair outcome’ and ‘Facility’, had more weight.

  When looking at the Top5 items that had the highest importance among the 21 surveyed items, the difference in the importance between imported car owners and domestic car owners can be seen [Table 1]. Three of out of Top5 items were common to both imports and domestic cars. They are ‘1. Provides additional (free) service that is not requested’, ‘3. Maintenance/Repair process and situation can be checked at any time’, and ‘4. Less time than expected (from reception to finish)’, from which we can know that the service users are satisfied with the unexpected additional services, while they want to know about the progress, and desire not too long total service time.

  Two items that are included in the imported cars Top5 except for the three common items, are ‘1. Less time required from visit to service’ and ‘5. No need to ask or wait for parts’, while the two items included in domestic car Top5 are ‘1. Not more expensive maintenance/repair costs than expected’ and ‘4. Reliable explanation for the cause/solution to the problem’. Two items of imported cars were basically relates to time, while domestic car was cost and reliability. This result indicates what the owner of imported cars want seriously is time. It can be seen in the cost, which is the 1^st in importance among the owner of domestic cars (14.7%) but became the 7^th (4.4%) among the imported cars owners. Especially, the meaningless waiting time from arrival at service center to start of service was most highly uncomfortable to them.

  Time and money are the values with ultimate importance to people. There are people who want to save money by sacrificing time and there are people who trying to secure the time by spending money. Imported car owners certainly belong to the latter. However, it is the same to all of them in preferring to get something free without a burden on time and cost.

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