Mazda outscores Toyota in customer satisfaction

The Japanese brand ranked highest with a satisfaction score of 859 over 1,000, surpassing last year’s joint leaders Toyota (853) and South Korea’s Hyundai (835), according to U.S. market research firm J.D. Power.

U.S.’s Chevrolet saw the steepest decline from third place last year to seventh this year with a score of 819, said the 2019 Vietnam Sales Satisfaction Index (SSI) Study released Thursday.

It ranked above two brands with the lowest scores, Japan’s Honda (810) and South Korea’s Kia Motors (799), according to the study, which polled 1,512 new vehicle owners online between March and August.

73 percent of customers said dealers delivered their cars with a special ceremony, an increase of 21 percentage points from 2018. Among customers who experienced a special ceremony, satisfaction points were higher.

But demonstration of car features during delivery declined by 3 percentage points to 32 percent, despite customers showing a preference for sales consultants or delivery specialists demonstrating car features to them rather than learning on their own.

Dealers need to pay attention to the importance of demonstrating car features professionally, especially since 75 percent of all new owners are first-time buyers, said Siros Satrabhaya, J.D. Power regional director for Thailand and Vietnam.

The study also found out that Vietnamese car buyers are increasingly using the internet to gather information before buying a car.

The number of people who visit a dealer’s website increased by 42 percentage points to 89 percent, and those who visit its Facebook pages increased by 20 percentage points to 57 percent.

From January to September, sales of imported cars rose 150 percent year-on-year to nearly 93,600, while that of locally-assembled vehicles dropped 13 percent to 136,800 units, according to the Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (VAMA).