Automotive Marketing Research - Tips to Find the Best Firm

The automotive industry is growing at a rapid pace. The success of a product is directly proportional to the amount of research that has gone into making the product. Hence, automotive marketing research is integral to the entire process of product development and feedback. This type of research entails various specialized areas. That’s precisely where experienced research firms play a significant role starting right from the preliminaryproduct design research stage.

Automobile events are a fertile ground to conduct research and empower you with information that will make your brand stronger. Automobile event research needs to be carefully carried out to get you the right results from live events.Let’s take a look at some specializedautomotive marketing research areas:

• Car clinics: Static automobile clinics are effective automotive marketing research toolsthat help in new product development and feedback. It is advisable to choose a firm that can conduct clinics of all sizes with the number of vehicles ranging from 1-2 to as many as 90 or more if so required. The research firm in questions should be able to handle a large number of respondents across multiple cities. The use of hand-held, touch screen computers makes data easy to collect, process, analyze and integrate.
• Drive clinics: There are different types of drive clinics such as Open Course Drive Clinics, Closed Course Drive Clinics and Motorcycle Ride Clinics that help to get realistic feedback about various aspects of driving a vehicle. A good research firm should be able to provide experienced, well-trained and flexible interviewers who can get maximum information from respondents while controlling a dynamic situation. Closed course drive clinics are an ideal way to get respondents to experience the exact same driving conditions across all drive vehicles. A closed course could include stadium parking lots, NASCAR tracks, road race courses, skid pads, drag strips, blocked off sections of public roadways,etc.
• Auto show research: These events are among the most cost-effective ways to get customer feedback in a clinic-style setting. At such events, interviewers from a research firm conduct intercept interviews with event attendees. Automobile event research could include several different types of events such as auto shows, power sports events, vendor display and race events and enthusiast events. It is advisable to choose a research firm that has experience in conducting research across all of these events while employing randomized respondent selection techniques.

So whether it is the initial product design research or final customer satisfaction research, it is advisable to find a firm that has experience in different facts of automotive marketing research.