What makes a consumer pick a particular automotive product off the shelf and head to the cash register? Who stands behind him or her guiding the selection? Is it the store’s sales staff, a friend’s voice, the price tag, the promise of performance, the pretty package, or the guarantee? How does the power of suggestion compare to the power of price? Could your sales staff be putting a few more items in a consumer’s shopping basket today?
Whatever your answers are to any of those questions, the bottom line leads back to the power of the consumer. Frankly, you need to tap into this power. We believe our 8th Annual Consumer Attitude Study will help you do just that.
By reading this survey you will learn about the impact of advertising dollars. Discover consumer maintenance schedules –– not necessarily manufacturer schedules, but the ones consumers believe exist. Understand that a deal to a consumer isn’t always about price. See the relationship between brand and trust as it passes through 18 diverse automotive aftermarket categories. You might well decide to rearrange some of the items in your store.
Our 8th Annual Consumer Attitude Study answers all these questions and more –– we kept asking consumers why they did what they did. The detailed reports provided here feature an extremely high degree of statistical confidence on consumer buying behavior: a 95 percent confidence level, ±3 confidence interval. This means that we can be 95 percent sure that if we had conducted interviews with all consumers buying in these 18 automotive aftermarket categories throughout the United States, the results would be the same, ±3 percentage points.
We invited 30,000 consumers to complete surveys for the following categories: additives, alternators/starters, antifreeze/coolant, batteries, belts & hoses, brakes, car wash products, diagnostic tools, filters, floor mats, hood shields, ignition system components, motor oil, shocks/struts, spark plugs, touch-up paint, waxes/polishes and wipers. For each category, consumers answered 23 questions.
From the information we gathered on brands we learned a couple interesting facts. First, of the consumers who bought waxes and polishes in the last 12 months, sixty-four percent were impacted by the brands. Sixty-one percent of the consumers buying motor oil were affected by the brands. Meanwhile, consumers in several other categories — chiefly, alternators/starters, floor mats and touch-up paint — were more focused on function and performance than brands.
This type of information can help you push the right buttons when attempting to sell items to your walk-in customers. Understanding how consumers think about certain categories should help you create sound merchandising and marketing plans for these segments of your operation. This data also can give you vital information to share with technicians so they can properly service customers visiting their bays.
Please note that, as extensive as this report is, it does not include everything we have to offer. Each category has been studied with additional questions that are more in-depth, such as brand preferences, repair intervals, and where the products were purchased. If you’d like to learn more about obtaining unpublished data from these reports, contact Editorial Director Larry Silvey at (440) 891-2612.
Available downloads include:
Additives
Alternators & Starters
Antifreeze/coolant
Batteries
Brakes
Car Wash Products
Diagnostic Tools
Filters
Floor Mats
Hood Shields
Motor Oil
Shocks & Struts
Spark Plugs
Touch Up Paint
Waxes & Polishes
Wipers
