Does Toyota ”Perfect Car Diagnostics Test" help promote car purchasing? Analysis using third-party data

Toyota "Perfect Car Diagnostics Test" is a diagnostic tool released in September 2021 on Toyota's owned media "toyota.jp."

By answering simple questions such as "Do you like cute or cool-looking cars?" and "What do you want to use the car for?" the system will find a car that matches your needs from a lineup of about 40 models.

On the results page, you can view the specifications and selling price of your matched car and proceed to a simulation of the estimated payment amount, offering a seamless customer experience and transition from the diagnostic to purchasing.

In an interview with the management of "toyota.jp" published in MarketZine, they discussed the key points to be addressed by the company's customer and digital experience for the automotive business, an industry which requires a long consideration considering questions such as "How can the actions taken at dealerships be accelerated online?" and "How far can we improve the consideration and the accuracy of purchase intention through the Web?" The company's CX and DX efforts should be focused on such areas.

Let's use Dockpit to investigate the customer attraction on the "Perfect Car Diagnostics Test" page. Dockpit is a web behavior log analytics tool from VALUES that allows you to analyze competitor sites and research trends using monthly updated behavior data in your browser.

First, let's look at the data on the number of users who visited the same diagnostic tool.

Looking at the above graph exhibiting the number of users, it appears that the number of users had been hovering around 20,000 to 30,000 users per month for about six months since its release in September 2021. Thereafter, the number of users increased rapidly from February to March 2022 and has recently returned to the previous volume of 30,000 monthly users.

Next, let's look at the breakdown of the customer attraction structure in the graph displaying the change in the number of users.

Exploring the factors behind the increase in users in early spring, we see that the number of users from display ads increased in February 2022, and there was a significant increase in inflows from social media in addition to display ads in March.

In addition, the breakdown of social media shows that most of the users came via LINE. Below is a graph of the number of visitors whose inflow source was LINE.

Based on these data, it is likely that the company had been expanding the awareness of the diagnostic tool through display ads since February 2022 and had begun directing visitors to the tool on its corporate LINE account in March.

In fact, in April of this year, when we followed Toyota's LINE account, we were led to the "Perfect Car Diagnostics Test," as shown in the image below.

Considering the fact that user visits from social media (LINE) have been occurring continuously since March, it seems that efforts are being made to maintain user contacts by utilizing official LINE accounts.

Let's also delve into the user demographics of the "Perfect Car Diagnostics Test." On Dockpit, we will look at the gender and age data of the users.

The gender data shows that men account for nearly 60% of the respondents, with 58.5% being men and 41.5% being women. The age data also shows that the majority of users are in their 50s and 60s, followed by those in their 30s. Compared to the total Internet users as a whole, there are more users in their 50s and older, with a dip in the number of users in their 40s.

Current users in their 50s and older experienced the 1990s, when the sales of new domestic cars were at their peak. It is thought that many see a car as "something you buy new," and they may tend to use diagnostic tools more proactively than young people.

When it comes to purchasing an automobile, customers have a long period of consideration before purchase, and sales representatives are required to "nurture" customers by accurately capturing the insights of their targets. To this end, it is important to maintain continuous contact with customers who are still contemplating and to approach them after grasping what their interests and preferences are.

Through this survey, we learned that the "Perfect Car Diagnostics Test" is attracting users via LINE, but in addition to the diagnostic tool, new initiatives are scattered throughout Toyota's official LINE account that contribute to nurturing potential users.

For example, the system is equipped with functions that allow users to perform various actions seamlessly on the screen, such as answering a questionnaire about car purchases through an exchange on LINE, conducting an inventory search, or scheduling a test drive.

In the past, with the absence of the Internet, sales in brick-and-mortar stores would have been conducted through a series of face-to-face meetings with customers to gradually solidify their purchase intent. We sensed that Toyota's new nurturing method was beginning to take shape, where Toyota is using web tools to establish similar and valuable communication with users who did not purchase immediately.

We hope this survey will be useful for your marketing work and market research.

[Research Outline]
・The analysis is based on online activity logs and user attribute data, with the cooperation of participants of a nationwide monitoring group
・Period of activity log analysis: June 2021 - May 2022
*Volume is estimated based on the domestic online population, based on the rate of occurrence among VALUES' monitor participants
*Target devices: Both PC and smartphone

The data in this investigation is from Dockpit, an analytics tool with online behavior log data and user demographic information under the permission of panelists in Japan presented by VALUES, Inc.

※The numbers of users are estimated by the data in the monitor and the internet population in Japan.