WHAT'S WORKING
More Data, More Customers
sumer study where we asked 1,000 con- sumers about their buying habits per- taining to auto repair. We also looked at how consumers use the Internet and other resources to help make decisions. Over the past six years, we’ve worked to find ways for transmission shop owners to improve their businesses. Many shop owners have applied these ideas and have enjoyed tremendous growth in their business; we’ve high- lighted several of them in GEARS. Let’s take a look at some of the
T
results from last year’s survey and see what information you can use for your business. Because there are several top- ics, we’ve listed them under separate headings.
Dealer Customers One thing we learned was that the
market for people that have a prefer- ence for the dealer is about the same as the market for those who prefer an independent transmission shop when it
Figure 1
comes to transmission repair. Results: 24.4% prefer visiting a dealer 24.6% prefer visiting a transmis-
sion shop This sparked an interest in discov-
ering what these consumers look for in the dealer. It also got us thinking about something else. Too often a shop owner is faced with a customer who wants the
work done but have no way to pay for it. Their credit cards are maxed out and their credit score is too poor to apply for new credit. Maybe it’s time to attract better customers. In our sur- vey, we asked consumers the maximum they’d spend for a major repair before looking for another car. We broke it down by gender and here’s what we got (figure 1). Once this topic of the dealer came up though, we decided to look at the data a little differently. Figure 2a shows a graph of what people will pay for repairs based on their shop prefer- ence.
This offers a stark comparison
1 = Less than $1,000 2 = $1,000 - $1,500 3 = $1,500 - $2,000 4 = $2,000 - $2,500 5 = $2,500 - $3,000 6 = $3,000 - $3,500 7 = More than $3,500
Figure 2A 48 Figure 2B
between dealer customers and custom- ers of every other category. Not only will they spend more, there’s a broader range in what they’ll spend. Simply, higher-paying cus- tomers reside in the deal- er group. Note: Figure 2b shows an additional legend for the graph so you know what the bottom scale rep- resents.
GEARS January/February 2012
his October at ATRA’s Powertrain Expo, we present- ed material from the 2011 con-
by Dennis Madden
members.atra.com www.atra.com
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