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Automotive awards -- what do they really mean?
Greg Melville of Money Magazine cautions car-buyers to reconsider when they hear and read about vehicle awards. In a new article, he addresses the strengths and weakness of the following award givers point-by-point:J.D. Power & Associates
Melville finds the organization's consumer interviews for their quality surveys to be top notch. However, he maintains the company's 90-day results are irrelevant, and feels the three year results are more informative to consumers.
Strategic Vision
Surveys on buyers' emotional reactions to vehicles, writes Melville, are best left to the buyer since they'll know if they like the car. Or not. Also, choosing a vehicle based on which award it did not win (Vision has 23 categories!) does not inform buyers about specific details like reliability.
R.L. Polk & Co.
Melville believes people's long-term buying habits do not reveal anything meaningful about a car's quality or desirability (e.g., the Saturn Ion and the Mercury Grand Marquis have high loyalty ratings).
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
Despite the different--and changing--methodology of both organizations, car buyers should seriously consider their safety ratings.
More details at the link. Curiously, Melville does not discuss what is arguably the buyer's best-known survey and data collection organization, Consumer Reports.
What do you think of Melville's evaluation?
[Source: Money via CNN.com]
Related: J.D. Power revamp should swing quality ratings
Consumer Reports Auto: Two dissenting views
TrueDelta questions quality of JD Power methodology
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Eric L. 1:11PM (5/30/2006)
The CR bashing will begin here no matter how reasonable the argument.
I for one subscribe too all the major car mags (CD, RT, MT, etc...) and CR. While the enthusiast car mags tell you about how wonderful the engine sounds and how subtle trim pieces in the interior or a graceful exterior arc make the car a pleasant drive, they completely omit what CR addresses - how easy the car is to live with. I love horsepower and sharp handling, but reliability and ease of ownership are also important to me as well, so I take CR's opinions and ratings seriously too.
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Richard Warren 1:13PM (5/30/2006)
"Automotive awards -- what do they really mean?"
In a word: NOTHING
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ME 1:18PM (5/30/2006)
Consumer Reports just send out a bunch of fliers and compiles the results, they make no attempt to be scientific or stastically relevant and if their subscribers are not average, well, then there is alot of bias in their survey. Ask yourself, is the Consumer Reports subscriber average? If not, throw out their report.
It is infuriating that a mag like CR is so influential, and yet makes no attempt to be right.
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hj 1:19PM (5/30/2006)
JD Power has the most bizzare awards. It seems like they make up awards so every car in the market has one; kinda like in elementry school when every kid got an award in the science fair because they didn't want anyone to feel like a loser.
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Michael Karesh 1:24PM (5/30/2006)
Excellent critique. I've never managed to put the problem with the satisfaction studies so succinctly.
One error: I think the JD Power VDS asks about the previous year of ownership, not the previous three years. At least this is what people who've completed the survey tell me. One year of ownership is better than 90 days, but it's still not ideal.
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Bob 1:24PM (5/30/2006)
I thought his analysis was pretty good of the different ratings. He would have done well by dicussing the pros and cons of CR too.
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Fabulo 1:28PM (5/30/2006)
"Automotive awards -- what do they really mean?"
They probably mean a lot for the marketing department. See who actually pays the companies for their business. If it's not consumers directly, then, it probably does not mean much to them.
However, #1 in whatever j.d. power and ass. thingy survey whatever!, that's a strong selling point.
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Michael Karesh 1:30PM (5/30/2006)
hj,
JD Power has an incentive to provide as many awards as possible, because that way more people will be willing to pay for the right to advertise that they've received an award.
I'm personally against the whole emphasis on "the best" in any particular area, because it overemphasizes one aspect of cars to the detriment of others.
Better to give people enough information that they can make the tradeoffs themselves. Because no one else can honestly make the tradeoffs for you unless they happen to have identical priorities and perceptions.
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robino 1:35PM (5/30/2006)
Automotive awards are for the most part another form of advertising. This includes awards given by carporn mags like Motor Trend and C&D. None of them could exist without the support of the auto manufactures - whether it be through advertising, providing cars or purchasing survey results. For all its faults, CR does attempt to maintain its independence from the manufacturers of the products it tests.
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Gardiner Westbound 1:44PM (5/30/2006)
Omitting Consumer Reports from an auto awards discussion is like overlooking the Pope in a world religions piece. CR is the bible for tens of millions. It takes no industry money and faithfully reports subscribers’ reliability information. Its top rankings are not for sale, which cannot be said for all Car of the Year awards. All the auto manufacturers would kill for a favorable mention.
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GM WHO? 1:46PM (5/30/2006)
Winner of the first Motor Trend Sport/Utility of the Year award, ... 2001 Pontiac Aztek GT, WTF? Another loss of credibility for an award, and on the first recipient too!
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Michael Karesh 2:13PM (5/30/2006)
One problem with CR is that its members don't faithfully report their information.
First, it might have tens of millions of readers, but about 4 million subscribers. The website has another 2 million suscribers, with an undisclosed amount of overlap. So many people who rely on the magazine do nothing to support it.
Second, they received reliability information on a little over 1 million vehicles this year. Figure the average members has two vehicles (and the average is likely higher), and that they have 5 million members--only about 10% bother to return a survey.
Why doesn't CR insist that people return the surveys? Perhaps because they rely on their members for revenue, and don't want to risk driving some away.
I'm taking a different approach with TrueDelta. If people absolutely don't want to fill out a survey, then I'll let them pay for access to my results. But I'd prefer that they'd contribute to the results they seek by participating in the research. The lower the response rate, the larger the possibility that the results are distorted.
I have no idea what J.D. Power's response rate is.
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Jeff R. 2:20PM (5/30/2006)
#10-
Who are you, CR's president? You sound like an advertisement for CR, not to mention that you are completely wrong. CR is a very biased publication which hates American cars, wants GM to burn to the ground, pushes a leftist agenda, and performs numerous irrelevant tests like "which coffee tastes best" or "which cereal tastes better." One more thing- comparing CR to the Bible is a grave insult, and I'm not even religious. How can you buy all of CR's hype?
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robino 2:27PM (5/30/2006)
Michael: I see your point and I have registered on your site. But you are going to need another 6,000,000 or so members to match CR. The testers at CR also have the advantage of driving and evaluating many cars in a short period of time and in many cases side-by-side. This makes it much easier to make relevant comparisons. Good luck with your site. With enough data it could be a valuable resourse for both car enthusiasts and everyday drivers.
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Stphane Dumas 2:41PM (5/30/2006)
It could be interesting to talk about awards from others countries and in others languages like the "Car of the Year" award in Europe, Latin America or by Australian magazine Wheels and the Spanish magazine Automundo who chosed the Pontiac G6 as "COTY" http://www.sportscarmarket.com/articles/archives/89 http://www.autoworld.com/news/full_story.asp?id=4355
Maybe someone should start an award similar like the Golden Rasberry awards aka Razzie Awards http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razzie_Awards gived to the worst movie. But this time, it could be gived to the "Worst car of the year" LOL
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robino 2:49PM (5/30/2006)
#16 There would be to many nominations from GM.
Oh God! I can't believe I typed that. Please forgive me.
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GM WHO? 2:54PM (5/30/2006)
Take your little red dots, your calipers, triangles, plaques, and whatever the hell the journalist sellouts bring to market to entice you, and wave them in victory for your favourite brand all you want. The only thing that will ever really assist in making a wise purchase decision is the personal experiences of yourself, family and friends. The people in your life who care about you are more likely to shoo you away from the crap they have delt with and learned from, than the award giving a**holes with a fattened-up wallet, and a belly full of steak!
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Michael Karesh 2:59PM (5/30/2006)
CR doesn't necessarily need as many members as they have. It's hard to say without the sort of detailed information about their sample and methods that they never provide. It's the response rate that concerns me--the 90% who don't respond, why aren't they responding?
At any rate, they only have about 500,000 people who return surveys. That's easier to match than five million.
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JZeke 3:17PM (5/30/2006)
An empassioned review of something new usually attracts the early adopter to buy the latest and perhaps greatest. Whereas clinical analysis from any of the major awards groups merely serves the masses in aliviating their collective buyers remorse.
Simply put?
If you really need a JD or RL award to justify your auto purchase, you likely arent a car enthusiast anyway.
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Eric L. 4:04PM (5/30/2006)
#18 - It is obvious you have never received a CR survey. I have, and they only ask for ratings for vehicles that are newer than 6 or 7 years - the long term reliability ratings in the back of the April Auto issue goes back only that far. Given the average CR reader *may* have purchased a CR recommended vehicle in the past, it is highly probably that vehicle proved reliable enough to be older than 6 or 7 years - therefore, one cannot expect a 100% return rate for the automotive portion of the survey. The CR annual survey also covers everything else they review as well, not just cars.
Like I posted above, I read *all* the automotive magazines and have found CR to be very good in terms of buying advice in terms of people looking for a car. Unless you want to throw your money away, reliability and real world ease of ownership are very important for a new vehicle purchase, and this is not reported by the enthusiast mags.
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