Like everything we do, NVES rests on ValueCentered Psychology. The instrument came out of hundreds of one on one interviews in the US and abroad, run to learn what actually matters to people as they shop for, buy and live with a vehicle, and how they describe it in their own words. We then did the work of translation, mapping those words to the terms engineers and product planners use, so a number in the data points at something a specific team can act on. Owners of new cars and light trucks tell us, in detail, how they chose their vehicle and how it has lived up to the choice.
What it covers
The questionnaire follows the whole ownership experience, from the first reason to shop through to the vehicle the buyer got rid of.
- What triggered the purchase
- Shopping history and vehicles considered
- Purchase reasons
- The dealership experience
- Product attribute ratings
- Problems experienced with the vehicle
- Overall emotional response to the vehicle
- Values and emotions behind the choice
- Demographics and personal attitudes
- Other vehicles in the household
- The vehicle that was replaced
- Owners' own words about the vehicle
Why the numbers hold up
The same structure, with questions that keep up
The structure of the instrument holds from wave to wave, so trends are real trends and not artifacts of a changed question. The questions inside it are updated to reflect where the industry has moved, which is how a study that started in 1994 still asks about what matters now. Much of the data trends back to the 1990s, and when an issue becomes important to the industry we have often been measuring it for years already.
Scales in the owner's own words
Ratings use the Edwards Commitment Scale, which runs from “I hate it” to “I love it”. “Satisfactory” sits in the middle, where it belongs, so the data separates owners who got what they expected from owners who will come back and bring others with them.
A sample large enough to read a single model
With nine million respondents to date, results hold up at the model level, and for the buyer groups inside a model, not only at the level of the brand.
Ask your own question
Subscribers can add questions to NVES and get answers tied to everything else each respondent has told us: their vehicle, their values, their emotional response. See Pulse of the Customer®.