Influence of Brand Perception on Tire Replacement

Earlier today, J.D. Power, a globally recognized market research firm released this year's original equipment T.C.S.I study. T.C.S.I. is an acronym for Tire Customer Satisfaction Index and is a mathematical model to study how driver, shoppers and car enthusiasts like the tires around the rims of their beasts.

The study conducted by J.D. Power is currently in its 16th year and exhibits the behavioral patterns of shoppers when they have to choose for replacement for the original tires. The market research firm conducted a survey among 3,496 people, all of whom had relatively new vehicles (within 12 to 24 month of ownership) asking them to rate their original equipment tires on a 1,000 point scales based on four factors :

Appearance
Durability
Ride
Handling

All the four factors seem reasonable enough. If you think that a driver would give priority to durability and ride comfort over another factor such as appearance you are in for a surprise. According to Mohit Arora , executive director at J.D. Power ,

"14% of customers indicate tire appearance—tread design and wheel/ rim styling—is an important reason to select a replacement tire "

Another key point that comes forward through this report is the influence of brand perception while looking for tire replacement . According to the survey, 52% of the customers acknowledge the fact that brand perception is an important factor when they choose a tire replacement. This , however, does not seem odd. For us Indians, brand perception is a very important criterion. Most people tend to get influenced by the advertisements even before using the equipment. Most of us tend to rank brand , even the ones we have never ever use!

Even after using the products and services, most of the consumers are willing to use tires from the same tire manufacturing firm, maybe due to the fact that the are satisfied with the brands they are currently using and are unwilling to experiment, since vehicles are an important utility that we use multiple times in a single day.An interesting statement by Mohit Arora was :

"Given the fact that tire brand perception is a key driver when considering replacement tires, and that more customers are purchasing at authorized tire retailers, OEMs may want to provide a superior customer experience at their authorized tire outlets "

A superior customer service would definitely help these firms increase the overall sales . Since nearly 59 % of the shoppers buy from authorized stores the sales will definitely be significant.

According to the reports, MRF and Bridgestone tie as the best firms in overall customer satisfaction.

Here is a chart comparing satisfaction index between different tire manufacturing firms.

Apollo is a close second (with 874 points), while Goodyear has the least customer satisfaction index.

The intentions to repurchase the original equipment are extremely high . Nearly 74% of the total customers are highly satisfied with their brands and have shown high interest to repurchase the same brand for the foreseeable future.