October 16th, 2023, Bhavika Bansal
In the swiftly evolving landscape of the automotive industry, the integration of digital technologies has emerged as a pivotal force in reshaping the consumer experience. But, have car brands managed to successfully leverage innovations like smart features, augmented reality displays and seamless connectivity among others, to elevate their digital offerings?
This article explores the results of a recent YouGov survey – conducted across 17 international markets - that explores whether consumers believe car brands provide a good digital experience, benchmarked against their impressions from 2022.
Much like in 2022, of all the categories we looked at, car brands are the least likely to be providing a good digital experience to consumers – and perceptions have weakened since last time we asked a year ago, from 14% in 2022 vs. 10% in 2023.
This fall in the share of consumers who are satisfied with the digital experiences being offered however, is not limited to just car brands and can be seen across all sectors.
A closer look at consumer opinions about the digital experience provided by car brands by market reveals further nuances.
Significantly outpacing the global average, 18% of consumers in India (down from 23% in 2022) and Hong Kong (up from 9% in 2022) are satisfied with their digital experience with car makers. Hong Kong is the only market in which we see an increase in the proportion of consumers who think car brands are doing a good job on this front. However, this proportion falls to less than a tenth of consumers in Singapore (7% in 2023).
An equal share of respondents in 2023 and 2022 in the UAE say car brands provide a good digital experience (20%).
On the other hand, consumers in Mexico are much less likely to say the same in 2023 (15%) than in 2022 (19%). Similarly, the impression of digital experiences offered by car brands appears to have taken a hit between August 2022 and August 2023 when it comes to Canada (13% in 2022 vs. 11% in 2023) and the US (12% in 2022 vs. 7% in 2023).
A similar situation prevails across all our polled European markets. The most significant drop in the share of satisfied consumers can be seen in Poland (from 23% in 2022 to 10% in 2023), Germany (from 15% in 2022 to 9% in 2023) and Sweden (from 13% in 2022 to 7% in 2023). Britons continue to be the least satisfied with the digital experiences provided by car brands in 2023 (6%), just as in 2022 (8%).
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Methodology: YouGov Surveys: Serviced provide quick survey results from nationally representative or targeted audiences in multiple markets. The data is based on surveys of adults aged 18+ years in 18 markets with sample sizes varying between 512 and 2,000 for each market. All surveys were conducted online in August 2023 Data from each market uses a nationally representative sample apart from Mexico and India, which use urban representative samples, and Indonesia and Hong Kong, which use online representative samples. Learn more about YouGov Surveys: Serviced.