Automobile Purchase Behavior 5:
                - Who is the Main Competitor of Imports?

  4 people in five imported car purchaser during the past 1 year considered imported cars only. People who chose imported cars after comparing the domestic and imported cars were only one in five people.

  Automotive specialist research firm, Marketing Insight (www.consumerinsight.co.kr), asked the consumers, who purchased a new car during the past 1 year, about their previous car for domestic or imported, and with which car compared at the time of purchase in Automobile Syndicated Study that had been conducted in July every year. The summarized results of asking whether the compared with the purchased new car is domestic or imported during the past 10 years is [Figure 1].

  To determine what kind of comparison had made in the purchase process of new car buyers within past 1 year, a separate table was drawn [Table 1].

  The most notable trend now is 20%p decrease of ’considered domestic only’ during the past 10 years, and 9.2%p increase of ‘considered imports only’ during the past four years. In the comparison between ‘domestic and imports’, the winning rate of domestic is good at 77%. However, the fact that the reason for the purchase of domestic and non-purchase reason of imported cars is because of ‘Price/purchase condition’ (Refer to: Automobile Purchase Behavior 3: Reason for Not Buying Imports after Consideration -1st is Price, 2nd is A/S) makes it difficult to have optimistic outlook. That means there are not a few reserved demands that considered imported cars but gave up because of the concern on price. When the spreading of low cost and small imported cars is actively carried out, the frontline with ‘domestic and imports’ is expected to be expanded, and the winning percentage of domestic is likely to be lower than it is now.

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