The six-monthly NFDA Attitude Survey asked the critical question ‘how would you rate your manufacturer?’ and saw Lexus wipe the floor with the opposition with a massively-impressive 9.8/10 score. The average score that dealers gave their manufacturers was 6.6/10, slightly up from the previous survey.
After Lexus came Kia (9.2) and Toyota (8.9), but Renault (4.0), DS (4.1) and Alfa Romeo and Fiat received the lowest ratings (4.5).
“It is encouraging that despite the challenges affecting our industry, franchised dealers show high levels of satisfaction around a number of key business areas, particularly current profit, margins on used cars and manufacturers’ finance programmes”, said Sue Robinson, Chief Executive of the National Franchised Dealers Association (NFDA) which represents franchised car and commercial vehicle dealers in the UK.
The NFDA has conducted the Dealer Attitude Survey twice a year since 1989.
For this edition of the survey, in January 2022 franchised dealers were asked a series of questions covering business issues affecting the relationship with their respective manufacturers. Responses were scored from 1 (extremely dissatisfied) to 10 (extremely satisfied).
With a total of 2,753 responses from 31 participating dealer networks, the survey received a record response rate of 67%.
Unsurprisingly as supply issues impact the market, dealers showed concerns with the availability of parts, returning one of the lowest average scores (5.7).