Dealer Newsmaker Q&A: Christopher Stommel

Jan. 1, 2020
Christopher Stommel, vice president at Foresight Research, discussed the Foresight Research 2013 Dealership Report relative to the importance of the service and parts departments to vehicle buyers.

Foresight Research recently released its 2013 Dealership Report, based on a study of 7,543 U.S. new car and truck buyers. Christopher Stommel, vice president at Foresight, discussed some of the findings relative to the importance of the service and parts departments to vehicle buyers.

In your recent Dealership Report, how important were service and parts when it came to selecting a dealership and the buying decision?

First, some context: The buyer base for new cars has been evolving over the past number of years, partially due to economic factors and also due to the aging population. Today's new car buyer is considerably older and wealthier than they have been in the past. So nearly half of all buyers today are over the age of 55, and that's the highest it's been in recent memory.

What we found when it comes to the service and parts department, is about four out of 10 buyers overall are influenced in their purchase decision by a good service department. That's down somewhat over past few years, but it's a relatively constant figure.

A much smaller proportion, just one out of 10, is influenced by a good parts department. The parts department isn't front and center during the purchase process, so it's not something buyers think about until they need it.

Older buyers, over the age of 55, are more than twice as likely to cite or be influenced in the purchase decision by the service department, than are buyers under the age of 35. The same applies to parts. Mature buyers are almost three times as likely to be influenced in their purchase by the parts department than their under-35 counterparts.

When it comes to selecting a dealership, about a third of all buyers say that the service department was among the criteria they used to choose a dealer. Older buyers are twice as likely as younger buyers to choose a dealership based on the overall service department. Young buyers are not considering the service department to anywhere near the same degree as older buyers.

What lessons can dealers gain from the research findings, when it comes to the fixed-operations department?

It's a challenge. Many sources suggest that younger buyers are not as car-centric as their parents and grandparents were. The second component is that cars today don't require the same degree of service as in the past. The younger buyer is not placing as high a value on the need for an excellent service department, because they are not anticipating using it to same degree their parents and grandparents did.

Younger buyers don't have as much experience, so these attitudes may shift with age. But I would anticipate it would not approach the same levels as it would have in prior generations, because the quality of the vehicles is so much better.

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