Study: Vehicle Quality Dictates Customer Satisfaction!
Automobile manufacturers can benefit from repeat purchases and word of mouth recommendations for their products if the longterm dependability rates for their products are high.
So will we see auto makers highlighting dependability as a selling point during the upcoming automotive trade events?
Deterioration in vehicle quality during the first three years of ownership strongly affects overall customer satisfaction as well as customer willingness to recommend their vehicle model found a recent study by JD Power.
How Quality Affects Satisfaction?
This study measured problems experienced by original owners of 3yearold 2005 model year vehicles and found that on average customers report experiencing 75 percent more problems in the third year of ownership than during the first 90 days.
The models with the largest increase in problem levels resulted in the highest declines in customer satisfaction as well as the probability of the owners recommending their vehicle models.
On the contrary those models that averaged less than 35 percent problem growth fared a lot better in overall satisfaction during the threeyear period. However none of the models studied reported lesser problems by the third year.
Where The Auto Makers Have Failed?
Although car manufacturers aren’t completely indifferent to the problems of car owners and have indeed addressed quite a few issues the following problems have remained unattended during the three year period since the study began in 2005 up to now.
These problems include:
1. Excessive wind noise
2. Noisy brakes
3. Vehicle pulling to the left or right
4. Issues with the instrument panel/dashboard
5. Excessive window fogging
In fact all of these problems are the five of the top 10 problems reported industrywide in the 2008 Vehicle Dependability Study and that they were among the top 10 most frequently reported problems in the 2005 Initial Quality Study too.
I know how irritating noisy braking systems can be automakers need to act fast and do something about these. Perhaps an extra attention to these issues before a vehicle launch would result in happy consumers and consequently increased customer satisfaction.
Why Car makers Still Deserve Kudos?
* The results also show that longterm vehicle quality has gone up by 5 percent industrywide in 2008.
* Compared with 2007 there’s been an overall decrease of 10 problems per 100 vehicles.
* Between 2007 and 2008 over 60 percent of the 38 nameplates studied showed improvements.
And out of the 19 segments studied the midsize premium MAV segment improved the most with 36 percent. Next in line were the compact car and midsize car segments both of which combined accounted for over 50 percent overall industry improvement.
With the highest improvements reported in the small car segment it’s good news for consumers because these are also the segments which have become the ‘hot cakes’ in the wake of skyrocketing gas prices and a wobbly economic scenario.
Vehicle Dependability Scorecard
While Lexus ranked the highest in vehicle dependability its top five followers were Mercury Cadillac Toyota and Acura respectively .
For more insights into the automobile industry kindly visit my blog: Autmobile Hotspot
About the writer: Fred is a journalist with 7 years of experience. Though as a professional he’s reported on myriad topics his favorites are the auto and the healthcare industry. Two of the platforms he’s previously worked on are Themedica”>http://themedica.com/”>Themedica and AutomotiveOnline.”>http://www.automotiveonline.com/”>AutomotiveOnline. He now blogs at: Automobile Hotspot.
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