CV dealers more optimistic than car dealers: Sewells study

The Sewells Group, a leading provider of dealer development solutions and services to automotive companies across Asia Pacific, Africa and the Middle East, has released its inaugural Automotive Dealer Confidence Index (ADCI) for India. As per the findings of the report, at present, commercial vehicle dealers are more optimistic than their passenger vehicle counterparts.

The study conducted in April aims to capture dealer mood and sentiments in the last quarter of the fiscal year 2013-14 across a host of brands and across product categories.

The ADCI is to be published quarterly and Sewells hopes it will evolve into a reliable lead indicator of retail sales across brands and vehicle categories.

The inaugural findings were based on 215 dealer responses received from 116 locations, representing passenger cars, commercial vehicles and two-wheelers of 24 different brands.

The timing is significant given that with the end of the fiscal in March 2014, the final sales tally has been disappointing. Automotive sales across the passenger vehicles category fell 6 percent as against the year-earlier tally.

The ADCI is designed to vary between -100 and +100 where an index score of -100 represents the most pessimistic outlook, and +100 indicates the most optimistic sentiment. The index is based on how dealers see the overall market and their businesses performing in next six months.

The findings of the inaugural survey are as follows:

• The overall ADCI stands at -20, representing a mildly pessimistic sentiment in the dealer fraternity.
• The passenger car ADCI stands at -40, indicating a moderately pessimistic sentiment amongst passenger car dealers.
• The CV stands at -32, representing a moderately pessimistic sentiment among CV dealers, but interestingly, a shade more optimistic than passenger car dealers.
• The two-wheeler ADCI stands at +13, indicating that dealers are mildly optimistic about the state of business with a six-month period.

According to Jayesh Jagasia, managing partner and CEO of Sewells Group India, “Automotive dealers are closest to the ‘action on the ground’. They are in constant touch with customers, potential customers, OEM staff and competition dealers. Consequently, each dealer carries a wealth of insight that shapes his / her sentiment about the near future. Sewells Group aims to be able to represent this collective sentiment in the form of an index, whose movement over time will reliably predict the direction of wholesale and retail sales across brands and categories.”

COO of Sewells Group, Dennis Anderson said: “Measurability is a core value of Sewells Group, and the Automotive Dealer Confidence Index exemplifies this. ADCI is a path-breaking and an important endeavour of the Sewells Group for all the key stakeholders of automotive industry, and we are looking forward to contributing to the industry via this medium.”