Research Outline

Extended Car Warranties Customer Journey

Goals

To understand the consumer journey regarding awareness, consideration, and purchase of a vehicle service contract / extended car warranty.

Early Findings

While there was abundant information about the automotive customer dealership, it was harder to find information about the customer journey of purchasing a vehicle service contract / extended car warranty. In order to gather the information, we focused our research on industry-specific publications such as Accenture, The Drive, and Euromonitor but information was scarce.

  • According to Auto Credit Express, there are two types of customers that buy vehicle service contracts, those that are on a budget and those that are not. Those that are on a budget tend to be more interested in buying warranties.
  • Moreover, warranty buyers seem to be uneducated when it comes to choosing the right warranty, which suggests that they might spend additional research time online to educate themselves.
  • 82% of buyers conduct some kind of online research before buying car insurance. Moreover, many car insurance buyers use a ROPO tactic or research online, purchase offline.
  • More than half of the consumers that buy car insurance use mobile devices for research and requesting quotes.
  • This is also supported by the fact that over 95% of auto buyers watch videos to gather information, with 61% of their time is spent searching online.
  • According to Euromonitor, when extended warranties are offered by a specific brand for their products, customers are more likely to stay loyal to that brand.