American car buyers rated the sales experience at Cadillac dealerships above average during the 2024 calendar year, according to the recently published J.D. Power 2024 U.S. Sales Satisfaction Index Study.
Cadillac scored 820 out of a possible 1,000 points, just above the Premium car sector’s average sales satisfaction of 818 points and considerably below first-place brand Porsche with 851 points.
The customer opinion of Cadillac put it in eighth place for 2024, behind the aforementioned Porsche as well as Infiniti, Jaguar, Acura, Land Rover, Lincoln and Volvo. Its score edged up just slightly compared to last year, when it got a rating of 817 points and was in seventh place among the 2023 Luxury sector contenders.
A slightly above-average ranking indicates customers are generally satisfied with the Cadillac sales experience. According to J.D. Power, rising inventories and concomitant falling prices are generating additional customer satisfaction this year. Since Cadillac’s above-average score is fairly stable year-over-year, this suggests the brand is satisfying customers on its own merits rather than the “background noise” of inventory and pricing.
The study looks at customer sales satisfaction through the lens of six different aspects of the buying experience. The delivery process itself is the most crucial of these, followed by the professionalism of the dealership employees, the negotiating process, paperwork, and the dealer’s physical site and website. The rating given to these six factors is aggregated into a final 1 to 1,000 score.
Buyers are generally less satisfied with the EV purchase process than buying an ICE vehicle, though the gap shrank in 2024 to a roughly 35-point difference for mass-market vehicles. This gap is because of dealership personnel’s unfamiliarity with electric vehicles, meaning they can answer less buyer questions and may not know how to set up home charging, a common purchaser concern.
Additionally, the study shows that only 8 percent of buyers are now purchasing new vehicles above MSRP versus 15 percent the year before. J.D. Power auto retail VP Stewart Stropp pointed out that “as shoppers see a wider variety of vehicles to choose from, pricing becomes more competitive across the market.”
Stropp added that “plenty of opportunity remains to optimize the path to purchase” in light of modest sales satisfaction gains despite improving market conditions.
Comment
The SSI study is actually a pretty decent study as I recall. Quite detailed.
Most manufacturers I was aware of purchased and analyzed it as sort of an independent check on where they stood against their competitors at the pop level. Manufacturer’s own internal customer satisfaction research gives no indication how they compare to competitors plus dealers often do their best to manipulate customer satisfaction feedback.
About the biggest surprise to me is how far down Lexus has fallen from their original total customer satisfaction focus.