Over the past three years, the reasons that prompt the average Russian to buy a new car have changed markedly. Savings, new models entering the market and the expiration of the warranty are no longer the determining factors for changing machines. At the same time, breakdowns of an existing car or an accident are increasingly becoming an incentive. Details – in the material “Izvestia”.
Savings gone negative
The main factor that encourages Russians to purchase a new car is the ability to sell an existing car at a bargain price. This follows from a survey of car owners conducted by the Avtostat analytical agency together with the Auto Mail.ru portal. This reason for changing the car was named by 39.6% of respondents (several answers were accepted). However, over three years, the share of motorists who take this factor into account has decreased by 11.2% – in a similar survey conducted in 2019, almost 51% of respondents mentioned it.
Photo: RIA Novosti / Maxim Bogodvid
More than halved (from 20.2 to 9.9%) the number of motorists for whom the reason for buying a new car was the expiration of the factory warranty of the car they already own. From 27.3% to 19.6%, the number of buyers who decided to change the car due to the appearance of a new model on the market decreased.
The presence of savings also became less of an incentive to purchase a car – the number of respondents who indicated this reason decreased from 20.8% to 10.8% over three years. An increase in salary motivates 8.1% of respondents to buy a car, while in 2019 this point of view was shared by 12.4% of respondents.
Pragmatic Approach
Over the past three years, potential buyers have become more pragmatic about purchasing a car. For example, in 2019, only 12% of motorists thought about purchasing a new model due to a malfunction or frequent breakdowns of an existing car. At the beginning of 2023, 24.6% of drivers already hold this opinion. The number of those who need a new car has increased from 11 to 15.7% due to the appearance of children and the expansion of the family. The presence of a dacha or a hobby now encourages 14% of respondents to buy a new car, in 2019 their share was 8.1%.
Photo: Izvestiya/Zurab Javakhadze
Three years ago, only 3.3% of drivers thought about buying a new car because the old one was damaged in an accident. Now their number has tripled to 9.7%.
Despite the rise in popularity of more practical reasons for buying a car, the emotional factor still has an impact. It even slightly increased: in 2023, the answer option “I’m tired of the car, I want another one” was chosen by 22.8% of respondents, while in 2019 only 18.5% of respondents answered this way.
According to independent automotive industry consultant Sergei Burgazliev, this is due to the consequences of the 2020-2021 pandemic, as well as rising car prices, including due to recent dealer cheating.
— These factors have formed the so-called pent-up demand. Buyers who were planning to buy a car faced some difficulties in the previous couple of years. Therefore, now they say that they are tired of the existing car and they want a new one,” the expert explained.
Photo: RIA Novosti / Maxim Bogodvid
At the same time, he stressed that at present the choice of such people is small. In the mass segment, these are either domestic models with truncated functionality, or cars of Chinese brands. In the premium segment, in fact, the only option is models supplied by parallel import.
How to choose a car
Russian buyers have changed priorities in choosing the car itself. Like three years ago, the key parameter that potential buyers pay attention to is fuel consumption. However, the weight of the fuel factor is decreasing: if in 2019 it was mentioned by almost 2/3 of respondents (73.6%), now it is indicated by 65.4% of respondents. In addition, over three years, the number of car owners who take into account the cost of car insurance when choosing a car has decreased from 19.6 to 16.3%.
Photo: Global Look Press/dpa/Marcus Brandt
At the same time, the number of those for whom the cost of spare parts for a future car is important has increased from 42 to almost 69%. The price factor for maintenance and repair has not changed much over the three years and remained at the level of 57-58%. At the same time, the share of respondents who take into account the further cost of a particular model in the secondary market when choosing a car has increased from 22% to 27%.
Warranty is important
Despite the fact that in three years the weight of the factory warranty factor has been halved, dealers still consider the existence of a warranty obligation an important consideration when making a decision to buy a car.
– Basically, new cars of Chinese brands are purchased today. One of the main motives for changing the current car to a new Chinese one is an official guarantee from the importer. In the premium segment, the main purchase catalyst is the entry into the market of an updated body or a restyled model, – Andrey Kamensky, marketing director of Avilon AG, told Izvestia.
Photo: RIA Novosti / Ramil Sitdikov
He also noted that the vast majority of premium brand models are now on the market through the parallel import mechanism. At the same time, the emergence of new products in this segment still affects demand.
“For example, the launch of the new Jeep Grand Cherokee, which is supplied as a parallel import, has increased interest in the Jeep brand as a whole. And the deliveries of the Volkswagen Bora sedan and the Volkswagen ID6 electric crossover, which were not previously presented on our market, attracted the attention of customers to the Volkswagen brand,” said the representative of Avilon.
Ride more
Changing the priorities associated with the motivation to purchase a car increases the period of ownership of it, says Igor Morzharetto, partner of the Avtostat analytical agency.
— Over the past ten years, the so-called period of first car ownership in our country has already increased one and a half times. If in 2014 the average motorist sold a car four years after the purchase, now it happens in about six years, he told Izvestia.
Given the current situation in the new car market, this period will only increase, says Morzharetto. In turn, this will affect the pace of fleet renewal and lead to an increase in the average age of cars, the expert believes.
