Yamaha Motorcycles wins customer satisfaction survey
Canstar Blue is an Australian customer satisfaction research and ratings business and in this survey customers rated their motorcycles based on criteria such as value for money, handling, comfort, fuel economy and more.
Canstar are a privately owned business, funded by licencing their award ratings after research is conducted for use in marketing, as well as through online advertising and lead commissions via links included on their website that lead to third party websites.
The Canstar Blue Motorcycle Satisfaction awards first started in 2015, and also include categories on gloves, helmets, jackets, boots and tyres.
Manufacturers are rated for value for money, handling, comfort, fuel economy, after purchase service, and reliability, as well as for an Overall Satisfaction rating, which is an independent value, not an average of the other scoring criteria.
Yamaha alone received a five-star ‘Overall satisfaction rating’ in 2016, with BMW, Honda and Harley-Davidson all receiving a four-star rating, and Ducati, Kawasaki and Suzuki received a three-star rating in the same category. It’s worth emphasising that the ‘Overall satisfaction rating’ is an individual metric and not related to or averaged from any of the other metrics used.
In 2016 Yamaha alone received a perfect five-stars for Overall satisfaction, as well as in the Reliability, Value for money, Handling, Mileage and After sales service categories. Yamaha only received a four-star rating for Comfort, where Harley-Davidson alone received five-stars.
Canstar recently announced that Yamaha achieved the perfect five-star rating for overall satisfaction to secure their Most Satisfied Customers Award for motorcycles. In 2015 Yamaha received three-stars in the same survey for overall satisfaction.
Denis Roberts – YMA Sales and Marketing Divisional Manager
“Having a great product range is clearly a key factor in achieving a high customer satisfaction score, but so is customer service. We have been working hard with our dealer network to improve our sales and service initiatives and it’s gratifying to see our hard work paying off.”
The next highest rated manufacturer across the combined categories was Honda, boasting full four-star scores apart from Mileage, where the brand was the only five-star awarded entrant apart from Yamaha.
Harley-Davidson also revealed a strong result, with four and five-star ratings across the board, with the exception of value for money, including four-stars for handling – which would seem to indicate that ratings are based on relative expectations within manufacturer’s product areas. The three-star rating for value for money, was offset by their five-star ratings for comfort and after sales service.
BMW Motorrad received four-stars across the board with the exception of the value for money category.
Ducati, another premium brand, likewise received a three-star rating for Value for money, along with three-star ratings across the board, which could reflect a much higher level of expectation from Ducati owners and customers in some areas, but contradicts their very strong results in 2015. In 2015 Ducati boasted a four-star Overall satisfaction rating, with value for money still a three-star. Comfort, Mileage and Reliability on the other hand were all four-stars, with both Handling and After sales service receiving five-star ratings. Ducati won the 2015 Canstar Blue Motorcycles After Sales Service award along with BMW. Ducati also won the 2015 Motorcycle handling satisfaction award.
Suzuki, despite four-star ratings across the board, saw a three-star rating in the overall satisfaction category place it on even footing with Ducati and Kawasaki, who received the same rating, with the trio organised by alphabetical order, and sharing equal third place when ranked by this specific metric.
Kawasaki also received a three-star overall satisfaction rating, with the same score in reliability, comfort and handling, while receiving four-star ratings for Value for money, Mileage and After sales service. In 2015 Kawasaki received a four-star score for handling.
These survey results (undertaken by I-view on behalf of Canstar Blue) are based on a total sample size of 1079 Australian motorcycle riders , who have own and have ridden a motorcycle in the last three years. 797 of that sample size were included to formulate the results. Manufacturers must receive at least 30 responses and not all brands are included in the results.
Research is carried out on a 10-point basis, with respondents asked to rate brands between 1-10, with Canstar clarying on their website: “Results are comparative and it should be noted that brands receiving three stars have still achieved a satisfaction measure of at least six out of 10.”
We’ve reached out to Canstar Blue who have clarified that the survey includes questions on motorcycle gear and riding habits and that those included in this survey must have purchased their motorcycle in the last three years.
The difference in sample size and respondents reflects those who had not purchased their motorcycle in this period. The survey is also representative of the Australian population, based on ABS statistics.
They also clarified that, “Overall satisfaction is an individual rating across all of our research categories. This has always been the case. The reason is to judge people’s overall satisfaction with the product or service they are rating.”
Perhaps, due to its small sample size this survey can be taken with a grain of salt.
Brands undertake their own customer satisfaction surveys to analyse their own performances, but it would be nice to have an authentic customer satisfaction survey to compare brands thus we have highlighted these results here in the hope that perhaps it might grow into something more substantial in future years.
You can find the Canstar Blue motorcycle specific results here
For comparison here are the ratings from the same survey conducted in 2015. Both lists are sorted by Overall satisfaction score, with brands sharing the same value in this category then ordered alphabetically.
