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Welcome to the REV. A briefing that goes deep into the Widewail Automotive Reputation Index data, surfacing the most interesting insights. Every 3 weeks we Rank, Explore & Visualize automotive reputation & sentiment data. All data is sourced from the Widewail Automotive Reputation Index (unless noted). The Index aggregates over 1.6 million Google reviews from 16k new car dealerships in the U.S. Customize the dataset like it's your own personal spreadsheet. Try it out. It’s free. Read online. Subscribe. |
RANK
So Much Love
Let’s look at brands with the fewest negative mentions of staff.
While STAFF is the #1 driver of positive reviews, mentioned in 56.9% of positive reviews, the topic is not a major driver of negativity.
Mentioned in only 17.49% of negative reviews, it’s the #7 driver of negativity.
Our hypothesis: unhappy customers prefer to highlight a specific problem and are understandably reluctant to bash an individual by name.
In the topic rankings for the fewest negative mentions of staff, MINI takes the win and GM makes a strong showing.
|
Topic Rank |
Brand |
Mentions |
Difference vs. Benchmark |
|
1 |
MINI |
13.46% |
-23.03% |
|
2 |
VOLKSWAGEN |
14.20% |
-18.78% |
|
3 |
BUICK |
14.44% |
-17.42% |
|
4 |
GMC |
14.51% |
-17.06% |
|
5 |
CHEVROLET |
14.58% |
-16.63% |
We will release more in-depth automaker topic rankings over the next few months.
First, the top 5 brands to buy a car from and the top 5 to service a vehicle at. We’ll launch that project in partnership with Car Dealership Guy on May 6th.
EXPLORE
Deals
Deals don’t drive positive reviews.
But for these four brands, deals have an outsized influence.
Each brand is either affordable or affordable luxury. While deals don't drive positive reviews for most brands, they are effective reputation drivers for these brands.
|
Topic Rank |
Brand |
Percent Difference vs. Benchmark |
|
1 |
MITSUBISHI |
+55% |
|
2 |
ACURA |
+47.58% |
|
3 |
MAZDA |
+42% |
|
4 |
HYUNDAI |
+31% |
VISUALIZE
Top 5, Bottom 5
Tough Towns (lowest reputation health score)
Friendly Towns (highest reputation health score)
*We filtered out any towns with less than 5 dealerships for both lists
When I published REV #001 on DealerRefresh, Joe Pistell commented, ”Love to see:
Tough Towns: Top 10 Cities with the lowest average ranks.”
Well, Joe, I finally got it done - it only took 6 months.
We collected data on 868 cities across the US to find the 5 with the lowest health score and the 5 with the highest. To remove outliers, we only looked at towns with 5+ dealerships.
The toughest town for dealers in the US: Kahului, HI.
Concord, NC, takes the top spot for friendliest. I’ll be honest; I’m not seeing much of a trend here.
Here’s the full list of cities if you’re curious.
See you in 3 weeks - Jake, Marketing @Widewail