Kia dealers happiest, Honda most dissatisfied: Dealer survey

Rajeev Lochan, Founder and CEO, PremonAsia said, “OEMs have a significant headroom to improve in meeting the needs of their channel partners. Kia Motors’ performance is commendable with segment and industry leading ratings across all the factors. Not only are Kia’s dealers satisfied with most of the hygiene needs, but they are also truly delighted with the product and their business viability.”

Both Kia and MG have a limited product portfolio comprising three models each. They also have a limited number of dealerships compared to the vast spread of market leaders like Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai.

Dealer satisfaction is directly correlated to the natural retail pull for products, entailing limited marketing and sales efforts by the dealers. Kia has stood out with fast moving products like the Seltos and Sonet helping the company to climb to the third spot in just a year after its India debut before being pushed to the fourth spot by Tata Motors.

The study saw more than 2000 responses from dealer principals and CEOs of dealerships.

“Product demand, how OEMs were providing training, warranty claims settlement speed, faster delivery of orders were some of key factors that determined the rankings. Slow moving products and parts and slower funding were also the other factors and determined satisfaction levels of the dealer,” Lochan added.

In the two-wheeler category Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India topped the ranking followed by Hero MotoCorp, TVS Motor Company and Bajaj Auto. Royal Enfield stood last.

In the two-wheeler segment the biggest concern which the study highlighted was OEMs not being open to dealer inputs in terms of improving dealership cost structure from viability and policy point of view. Similarly, there was no support from OEMs on buy back of dead stocks of parts. On the positive side, the study found that OEMs were fair in acceptance and rejection of warranty claims.