6 minute read
Investigation
INVESTIGATION Does it really matter if there are fewer women in car sales?
by Rebecca Chaplin
@believebecca
Nearly 70 per cent of car buyers have never bought a car from a woman, a shocking poll of buyers run exclusively for Car Dealer has revealed.
The What Car? survey of 3,000 car buyers, carried out on our behalf, found 68.4 per cent had never bought a car from a woman.
Respondents also resoundingly called for more women to be encouraged into frontline car sales roles – but does it really make a difference to the performance of a car dealership?
The poll revealed that although nearly all buyers (90 per cent) really don’t care if they buy a car from a male or female sales executive, only 32 per cent ever had bought from a woman.
However, managing director of What Car? publisher Haymarket Rachael Prasher and founder of the Automotive 30% Club Julia Muir, who appeared on Car Dealer Live to discuss the poll, said having more women in sales roles did change how a business performed.
Prasher explained that so much of this was about perception, and how vitally important it was that the industry addressed these concerns.
Shockingly, 29 per cent of female respondents to the survey stated they believed that car retailing was inherently sexist, with 13 per cent of men agreeing.
She said: ‘It is exacerbated by female experience, and actually of all the stats that came out of the survey I think the one that worried me most was the question “Do you think that any elements of car retailing are inherently sexist rather than imbalanced from a gender perspective?” That was designed to tease out whether there was just a gender imbalance issue or actual sexism.
‘Twenty-nine per cent of women felt there was an inherent sexism. Whether or not that’s fair we could debate endlessly, but if that’s people’s perception, then that’s the challenge that the industry has to face.’
Examples cited ranged from the prominence of men in advertising materials and a tendency for staff to address the man when a couple enter the premises through to the attitudes of male workers, especially with regard to having pictures depicting cars and under-dressed women on display.
While Muir agreed that this was about the perception of car dealers, and that it wasn’t a problem for simply new car retailers or used car independents, she was able to add some statistics from her own research that found only 12 per cent of sales executives were female and only six per cent managers.
Meanwhile in aftersales, there is a much more equal balance with almost gender balance in service advisers.
However, these preconceptions about gender roles can cloud the reality, she explained: ‘The situation you just described often is the case in many showrooms, that the only female that they see within the first few minutes of arriving is someone who serves them coffee. Then the men are introduced as the people who are going to do the proper business.
‘It’s very different in aftersales. I’m very pleased to say we’re almost gender-balanced in service advisers. So those people going to the dealership for that kind of service get a different experience.
‘But the impression we’re giving in sales is that the women serve the tea and the men do the deals. That’s not something people would experience in other situations.’
She added: ‘The first impression really counts. When someone goes into a retail environment, they’ve got previous experiences that they will build upon.
‘Women going into retail environments would not be used to it being predominantly male. Other retail environments are usually either balanced or predominantly female.’
In our survey, just 19 per cent of respondents felt the genders were equally represented in car showrooms, with 78 per cent saying they felt they were dominated by men.
Julia Muir
Click here to view the results of the What Car? survey
Overall, 87 per cent of respondents said they felt more women should be encouraged to work in showrooms. Some women also believed they were offered worse financial deals on cars as a result of their gender.
Vertu Motors chief financial officer Karen Anderson said she wasn’t shocked by the results of the survey. ‘Surely what all car buyers want is to be respected and treated in an honest, transparent and professional way by a retailer.
‘If this is achieved, does the gender of either the customer or sales executive matter?’
Georgia Coles, one of the founders of the Autocar Great British Women in the Car Industry, added: ‘Women often walk into a dealership knowing exactly what they want, including having already possibly interacted with the dealership online.
‘Dealers need to understand this, be much more inclusive with female customers, and in general just listen more.’
This was echoed by Muir, who said it was linked to deep-rooted attitudes put on to women generally. ‘What is it about those hours they spend in a car showroom that makes women feel so vulnerable that they would need a man to accompany them? It’s not necessarily anything to do with the nice salesperson who’s there to try and help them buy a car, it’s years of programming. We raise young girls to not go into a place where there’s lots of men on your own, don’t be left alone with a strange man, don’t get in a car with a strange man. Yet here we are with test drives where we’re expecting women to do that.’
She added: ‘We need to shift this perception that we are just men selling cars in a patronising way. It’s not true in many of our retailers and we need to work hard to make sure everyone is aware of that.’
Prasher addressed this point in the Car Dealer Live broadcast, explaining that some retailers were already working hard to address it, while others had been forced to change their process because of Covid-19.
‘When I think of a lot of those big franchise groups, they’ve done a massive amount of work on this in the last few years. One that springs immediately to mind are Arnold Clark where they brought in product geniuses, I know they’re not alone in that, but these are people who are not commissioned, the’re not there to do the deal. Ultimately, they’re a bit like an Apple Store experience to provide information about that product.’
‘I know they’ve worked very hard to attract a lot more female candidates to those roles. I think that does make a difference, and if people are doing more research online and they’re better qualified, fundamentally you’re coming into the dealership to have a brilliant experience.’ This need to shift towards an excellent customer experience as the norm was something Muir agreed with. She said: ‘I think the way we should frame this is it has come at a brilliant time, this information, because now is the time to start to make changes and to really take advantage of the new ways of working – and the new ways of selling online.’
