We know from our ICDP various aftersales surveys that, prior to a workshop visit for a service or a repair on their car, three key elements are considered by motorists to select their service provider: price, trust and convenience.  This webinar will expand on that through the results of our just-completed survey of 6,000 private aftersales customers across France, Germany, Spain and the UK.

In addition, in an aftermarket where the annual number of repair and maintenance operations per vehicle is expected to decline, competition between the different types of repairers of any type will continue to grow.

In this context, aftersales stakeholders are developing initiatives to offer various services, aimed at attracting and retaining leads and customers in their workshops. For example, over the past years, we have seen the emergence of mobile workshops and extended workshop hours to enhance convenience, menu pricing or parts ranges for older cars to improve price competitiveness or video checks while the vehicle in on the ramp to strengthen trust.

For obvious economic and organisational reasons, it is impossible for most repairers to offer the whole spectrum of services. Therefore, the main question for managers in charge of aftersales strategies is to understand what are the regular or innovative services that are adding value, from the motorists’ point of view, on the three criteria mentioned previously: value for money, trust and convenience.

In this webinar, we will review the most interesting services that are currently available in order to address the customer preferences within the real world business constraints.

If you would like to attend this webinar, please send an email to projectoffice@icdp.net and a Zoom invite will be sent to you.

The 2023 European Top50 Dealer Groups ranking, published annually for over a decade in conjunction with Automotive News Europe, will show some big changes as the result of the recent wave of acquisitions.  Whilst the majority of groups more or less hold their position, there are some other more dramatic changes, including within the Top 10.  In this webinar we will as usual summarise the ranking and the changes over the years, provide an updated market share projection to 2030, and discuss the underlying drivers of consolidation and the profile of the deals that sit behind the changes.

A press release can be downloaded below, please note this is embargoed until the 12th November..

If you would prefer an excel version of the ranking, please contact the Project Office projectoffice@icdp.net. And if you wish to attend the webinar, please send an email to janetrace@icdp.net and a zoom invite will be sent to you.

Please end an email to janetrace@icdp.net if you would like to attend this webinar and a Zoom invite will be sent to you,

In the next in our series of research topics update webinars, we will bring you a range of contributions from across our streams of work, picking up a number of timely and relevant issues for OEMs, dealers, and others across Europe.

•  In the UK, the ‘ZEV mandate’ rules now oblige OEMs to achieve a fixed share of zero emissions new car sales, or face very substantial fines.  The tactics that are being employed mean that most OEMs will avoid paying fines this year, but they are further destabilising an already-challenging market.  We will look at how the UK may well be offering a foretaste of things to come in other European markets if the step-down in the CO2 emissions targets takes effect next year as planned, and ask whether hitting UK targets in 2024 might be used against OEMs in the EU in 2025

• In France, our colleagues Thomas and Christophe have recently completed a new in-depth forecast of the size and shape of the French aftermarket through to 2030.  We will take a high-level look at how the market is expected to respond to the challenges of technology change and demand evolution

• In Italy, and setting the scene for the latest edition of our own European Top50 dealer groups ranking to be published soon, our friends at Quintegia have recently completed their own regular look at how dealer groups are evolving their structures and strategies in the Italian market – Luca will bring us the highlights

• How is the fleet sector, which is leading the transition to EVs in many markets, mitigating the variety of risks that are arising?   Drawing on our recent programme of interviews with leasing companies conducted across Germany, Italy, the UK, the Netherlands and Belgium, we will summarise the risks and issues raised by the electrification of the fleet sector and its market segments, and highlight what leasing companies are doing to address these challenges, and how they are supporting their fleet customers to do the same.

The entry point for the European Top 50 ranking is now well over €1.2 billion turnover and the average is closer to €3 billion.  The vast majority of these businesses are still privately owned, and as with any family business, succession is a critical issue, potentially triggering the sale of the business.  In parallel we see a trend by manufacturers to reduce the size of their wholly owned networks, leading to large, typically metro-based flagship dealerships coming to the market with price tags to suit.  To date there have been enough buyers with ambition and budget to match that have supported the consolidation process, but as this continues, do the potential transactions become too expensive and too complex to attract sufficient potential buyers?  Might we actually move into an era of rationalisation where groups are more typically broken up and sold in parcels to a number of buyers, making each deal more affordable and easier to align with the buyer’s own strategy?

If you would like to attend, please send an email to projectoffice@icdp.net and a zoom invite will be sent to you.