Toyota Philippines Grabs The Leading Position in the JD Power Sales Satisfaction Index

MANILA: Just after the Customer Satisfaction Index results revealed by the JD Power, the group has released the results of the Sales Satisfaction Index (SSI) study. It was Mazda Philippines, who grabbed the top position in the prestigious JD Power Customer Service Index and now it is yet another Japanese automaker who has topped the JD Power Sales Satisfaction Index. This is not the first time that Toyota has grabbed this ranking, this is the 3rd consecutive time that this prominent Japanese automaker has managed to maintain its position in the market.

Following Toyota Philippines, Isuzu and Kia have been placed on the second and third position in the SSI study respectively. A general question that might strike your mind is, what is the criteria of evaluation for Sales Satisfaction Index? So, here is a brief explanation of the whole process.

The particular JD Power SSI is based on the responses of the 1679 new-vehicle owners who have bought their vehicles between August 2015 and April 2016. The study begins from the February and was completed by June 2016. One interesting fact, which this study has revealed that the proportion of women buying new vehicles has consistently increased in the past few years. Though the satisfaction level is quite same among women and men, some trends have indicated a dip on the women’s side and slight hike on the men’s side. This might be a point of concern for the automakers, as more and more women are now purchasing vehicles and a lot of them with independent decision making authority.

The research also revealed that women are more likely to make their buying decisions on the recommendations received from the friends, relatives and other owners of the same model. On the other hand, men invest their time on Internet for a detailed research on the performance and comparison with the other models. In addition to this, only 7 percent women visit any dealership alone for checking the car, while the rest are accompanied with their family members, or friends. Contrary to this, 21 percent of men visit dealerships alone to inspect the car. It was also found in the study that female sales representatives are more effective in engaging customers over their male counterparts.

Successfully concluded 15 studies, in the 16th year, the study examined six factors on which an automaker was awarded ratings. These factors included sales initiation (20 percent), salesperson (17 percent), delivery process (18 percent), dealer facility (15 percent), deal (12 percent) and delivery timing (18 percent). The overall ratings in the sales initiation and delivery process have been improved for most of the automakers but, there has been a drop witnessed in the rest of the factors.

But, the leading three automakers in the list of JD Power CSI have managed to show improvement in all the five factors, that has also resulted in close margin in the ratings of the top three automaker. Toyota has managed to score 766 on 1000 points, Isuzu Philippines have to settle for 763 on 1000 and Kia has achieved 760 on 1000. For Toyota Philippines, managing this leading position seems quite easy due to the factors like a vast dealership network, clocked 51st dealership few days back, high demand of Toyota cars, and better after sales services. What’s interesting here is to see that Isuzu and Kia managing to grab the leading position in the list with just a close margin from the top position. Let’s see how Isuzu and Kia performs in the coming years.