UAE has one of the largest automobile industry and target audience in the world. This land of gold dust and black elixir is a home to many automobile manufacturers and vendors. To keep track of consumer demands, changing trends and effective forecasting, the GCC car market, conducted a thorough survey and exposed its result to all the carmakers operating in the UAE. This survey not only helped the companies in defining an automobiles’ upsides and downsides, but it also but also made the voice of the consumers clearer and louder, heard by the officials. This survey was a great initiative to decrease the communication gap between the customers and the companies and hence enabled the business owners to enhance the car features overall.
The first survey was conducted back in 2012, involving approximately 6,000 interviews. The main markets targeted in the GCC were UAE and KSA primarily. The survey covered the sub-compact, midsize, midsize luxury, small SUV, midsize crossover and midsize SUV categories. The conducted survey depicted the interests and requirements of the customer and brought forward consumer insights involving different brands, models and even the car buying process. This information was later on shared with various car dealers throughout the country. One of the primary object of this survey was to introduce various manufacturers who were capable of executing result oriented research projects which was never done in the automobile industry of UAE before. It’s one of the first major projects was accepting new vehicle buyers and clearly understanding the demographic profile of real buyers, the entire process of vehicle purchasing, discontent with the new vehicle and so on.
According to survey, the most interesting result was the figure of younger consumers in the region. So far, we would look at younger consumers in the rear-view mirror but the entry of these new consumers were stunningly amazing, bringing a whole set of new prospects. The survey clearly stated that information technology is playing the most important role in automobile industry. Many buyers were using both new and traditional channels of payments. Many car buyers now use internet as their future car purchases as an alternative to simple and traditional media. But the buying process is still inclined towards sources which are most trusted, including family, friends and other people, who share the advantages and disadvantages of each and every car.
The manufacturers who participated in this study acquired loads of information from customers, such as their prime competitors, sales and purchase process flows, consumer interests and requirements, financing methodologies such as loans and payment plans. As a result the manufacturers who actively contributed in the survey got this entire spectrum of information from their potential buyers.
Detailed results from this survey have so far been made available only to carmakers. The survey is set to enlarge all over the GCC, so the survey requests that if one come close to one of survey people, let them know how you feel about your local car dealer. Consumer research such as this survey will help carmakers make the car-buying process simple and hassle free.
