Abstract:

The paper will present findings extracted from an annual multi-country syndicated survey among new passenger car buyers. The purpose of this paper is to highlight and explore the attitudes of car buyers and their mode of screening and selecting new cars. Purchasing a new car is a highly intricate decision due to the nature of the product itself which is nowadays perceived to be more durable and relatively more costly than it used to be a few years ago. Many factors have contributed to the fierce competition among car manufacturers thus making the decision of the buyers even more difficult and selective. This paper will discuss how buyers make their choice of a new car, and will describe the process of gathering information, assess the screening criteria, explore the attitudes underlying the final choice, and will locate all these events within the time frame from the initial stimuli down to the purchase act.