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Blog Entries about "automotive research"
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Up against it
The Castrol Professional Car Servicing & Repair Trend Tracker 2013 is published in June. In the next issue of Auto Retail Bulletin we will produce a summary of some of the findings, meanwhile, here is something that struck us when contemplating the servicing retention for various franchises.
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Servicing and repairs
The idea of analysing the type of work carried out by age of car was prompted by a recent survey completed by Gocompare. Its survey found 36% of motorists have put off routine servicing to save money and a further 6% have never had their car serviced.
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Bodyshops diversify in falling market
With the kind permission of Auto Retail Network, we are pleased to reproduce here an article written by Trend Tracker director Chris Oakham about our report - The Car Body Repair Market in the UK, 2012-2017. The article appeared in the January 2013 edition of The Bulletin.
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Dispatches reveals the secrets of car insurance
Channel 4’s Dispatches programme (Monday 7 January at 8.00 pm) investigated the role of insurers and accident management companies. As noted on C4’s website: “Dispatches reveals the secrets of car insurance that all drivers should know. Harry Wallop investigates claims that major insurers cash in when you have a crash, through maximising profits, lucrative referral fees and rebate deals, sometimes at the expense of doing what's best for you and your car.”
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Car Servicing and Repairs Comparison Sites – the Future is Digital
We’re departing from usual Trend Tracker policy to welcome a guest blogger with some statistical insights into consumers’ habits. Ian Griffiths of Who Can Fix My Car has pioneered online sourcing and supplier comparison in the SMR sector, and urges suppliers to climb on the bandwagon. Meanwhile, he is uncovering patterns of consumer behaviour which complement Trend Tracker’s large-scale Lake Motorists Survey data.
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Independents still going strong
Trend Tracker’s longest-running question in its monthly survey of 1,000 motorists is: “Where did you last get your car serviced?” The latest results available are for January to August and these have been plotted together with the long-term trends in the graph below.
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The UK car body repair market
Later this month, or in early November, we publish our biennial report on the UK car body repair market. Published since 1994, this report has seldom made happy reading for those in the industry and this year’s is no exception. The car body repair market always seems in a constant state of flux with supply and demand precariously in balance, and a very small cohort of ‘professional’ insurance company customers accounting for the majority of work. Gross margins are consequently low.
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Independents winning in SMR battle
With the kind permission of Auto Retail Network, we are pleased to reproduce here an article written by Trend Tracker director Chris Oakham about our report - The Castrol Car Servicing & Repair Trend Tracker 2012 Update.
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Recession hits bodyshops too
While the chart below might suggest we are, once again, delving into the vagaries of the new and used car markets – we are not. No, the subject this month is bodyshops.
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Ball Park Figures
A few weeks ago the phone rang and one of our clients asked: “How much was the parts market worth in 2011?” It’s a seemingly simple question and we do keep track of the sales of replacement parts sold to end purchasers in the markets for servicing and mechanical repairs and car body repairs. But for 2011? And then there is the added problem of defining and measuring parts wholesaling.
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Our crystal ball
An important feature of our reports – we are launching three new reports this year - is the forecast section where we look into our crystal ball and project future market trends. In the past, this has proved relatively easy and it was just a matter of plugging key data into a computer model. But the current situation has us scratching our heads.
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Franchised workshop retention - going the wrong way
With Trend Tracker’s consumer data about car servicing now available up to the end of September 2011, the full impact of the ageing car parc on franchised workshop retention on servicing, maintenance and repair (SMR) is emerging.
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Accessorise! New car accessories research
It goes without saying that sales executives will make at least one attempt to sell accessories to new and used car customers. And as any sales executive knows, the best time to sell accessories is when a customer signs up for a car.
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The horse’s mouth
Research is all about bringing together facts to help answer crucial questions. In the case of the auto retail industry, research typically means ‘market research’. It’s about the market background, customers, the supply structure, the market size and trends, and so on.
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Independents winning more work
First published in Auto Retail Network (July 2011), Toby Procter uses the newly published Castrol Professional Car Service and Repair Trend Tracker 2011 report to reveal for the first time how the independent workshop sector has
increased its grip on car servicing, maintenance and repairs (SMR) since the recession. -
Driving workshop business
A large proportion of the research for the 2011 Castrol Professional Car Service and Repair Trend Tracker report is an extensive survey of motorists. We have run some elements of this consumer survey since 1994, interviewing 1,000 motorists every month.
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Tesco finally makes it into the motor trade
For the past 25 years, there have been regular scares in the motor trade concerning the threat of incursion by one of the massive retailers capable, at least in theory, of combining financial clout and money lending capacity with real estate and a liking for the F&I profits associated with car sales. Tesco has been treated as the leading potential contender, if only because of its pre-eminence among UK retailers.
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Polls apart from reality
One in three motorists would consider buying an electric car in the next 12 months, according to the release on a new survey by Motorpoint issued on 17th February.
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Needed for EVs to save the world: more R&D, less wishful thinking
In December 2010 the UK government’s advisory Committee on Climate Change recommended cutting the UK's GHG emissions by 60% relative to 1990 levels (46% relative to current levels), by 2030. The UK would then require a further 62% GHG emissions reduction from 2030 to meet the 2050 target already legislated for in the UK’s Climate Change Act.
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Only 5% of new car buyers are influenced by green credentials
Research released on 19.11.2010 by Bosch revealed that despite 69% of drivers claiming to do their best for the environment, only 5% of motorists buying a new car would be influenced by a car’s ‘green’ credentials.
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Where has all the work gone?
Auto Retail Network ran two aftersales workshops at the beginning of October and it was our job to present the latest information on the state of the market, which in these tough times was not the most upbeat of assessments. Once we had elucidated the problems, the delegates were tasked with finding solutions as they rotated around four workshops facilitated by experts in relevant areas.
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The new normal for motor retail
We’ve had a credit crunch, a recession, a new government and an emergency budget – all in the space of three years. So is that it? Will everything go back to ‘normal’ now? Yes, but probably not the ‘normal’ we experienced before. To use a current buzz-phrase, it will be a ‘New Normal’. Before we describe the ‘New Normal’, let’s dwell for a moment on what has happened.
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Pessimism and optimism
The least fun part of research is the statistics especially the maths required to work out cause and effect. We employ experts to do all this sort of stuff for us who render forth in what seems like a foreign language full of mysterious words and phrases like ‘t-tests’, ‘significance’ and ‘correlation’.
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The remarkable resilience of retailers
At least some of Trend Tracker’s analysts, myself included, have shown a glass-half-empty attitude towards the standard-model new car franchise system, as some of our past white papers have attested. But we have to admit that earlier reports of its impending demise were more than a little premature. The system isn’t bust yet, indeed it survived the 2008 recession rather better than many might have expected.
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Rare earth metals to get rarer faster?
The New York Times reported on Thursday (22.09.10) that the Chinese government had officially denied halting exports of rare earth metals to Japan, in retaliation for the detention of a Chinese trawler skipper in a long-standing territorial dispute. China had already cut export quotas for the cerium, lanthanum, neodymium etc. etc. on which Toyota et al depend for their NiMH batteries, permanent magnet electric motors and much else besides, and has over 90% of the world’s known rare earth metals deposits.
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Forecasting the Future 2009-2015
Essentially the Car Service and Repair Trend Tracker Update 2010 combines three longstanding research reports into one. First, and perhaps best known, is the Service Trend Tracker. Published since 1995, this report is based on extensive consumer surveys. Every month, 1,000 motorists are asked about where they last had their car serviced. The result is ‘servicing retention’ by make of car and provider of servicing – dealers, independents and DIY – a measure we have always found to mirror, very closely, the industry standard ‘service retention’ that includes all types of mechanical work including routine servicing.
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Facts and figures - DfT analysis of MOT Testing
Two invaluable sources of facts and figures for our research reports come from the Department for Transport (DfT) – the snappily-named Transport Statistics Great Britain and Transport Trends. Hardly the most thrilling reads, but crucial to understanding what’s happening in the car market and why.
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Grossing up gross margins
At this time of year, dealer group PLC’s publish their half-year results – informative barometers of the past six months. Also at this time of year private limited companies with financial years ending last December must post their accounts to Companies House.