Consumer Servicing By Vehicle Age

Consumer servicing is an increasingly competitive environment, with dealerships working hard to retain customers as their vehicles begin to age. Despite their best efforts, customers are still however shifting to the aftermarket. As can be seen below, close to half of new car owners service within a dealership network, but this drops to one in four once the vehicle is more than five years old. While some of that is DIY activity, the aftermarket is servicing well over half of older vehicles. Importantly though, if we split these results out by gender, this shift away from dealerships to the aftermarket isn’t being led by men, but by women. Just under two thirds of females who own older vehicle service them with aftermarket workshops, against just half of men. This dispels the commonly held misconceptions that women don’t engage with aftermarket mechanics, and highlights the importance of female customers to Australian workshops.