CHENNAI: With the number of women car owners on the rise, their priorities, too, are changing. If fuel efficiency was their preference earlier, today’s women car buyers look for product performance and brand image. According to The 2017 Women’s Automotive Buyer Study, Honda, Volkswagen, and Nissan are top brands favoured by women. The study, which has responses from 3,945 women car owners across 28 cities in India, says that Honda leads on product and cost of ownership, Volkswagen tops in terms of brand image and Nissan scores in after-sales service.
In the past five years, the percentage of women buying cars has nearly doubled, from 10-12 per cent to 25 per cent. And, to tap this growing market, automakers are increasingly making their products women friendly. While Korean carmaker Hyundai Motors India attributes 20-25 per cent of sales to women drivers, nearly 20 per cent of the demand for Renault’s Kwid is from women. For Maruti, the country’s largest car maker, as much as 15 per cent of sales across brands are driven by women car buyer, and the company expects that number to grow.
Earlier, women, particularly homemakers, had to register cars in the name of father or husband due to difficulties in accessing car loans. But the trend is changing with more women diversifying their roles in different professions and gaining financial independence, say experts. This has prompted car makers to design vehicles to suit their discerning female customers by providing clutch-less transmission, rear-parking cameras and navigation options, also in small cars.
While small cars are bought in large numbers, experts say, luxury models such as Mercedes Benz and BMW are also gaining sales momentum. “The average holding age of cars has come down to 3-4 years and typically, women owners tend to change cars more frequently,” says Shubh Bansal, co-founder and chief of marketing at Truebil.
Today, women are increasingly involved in the decision of purchasing a car for the family. However, only a small percentage of the consumer base is model-specific and the market, too, has not reached a point where they are able to offer a product to a particular gender, says Kumar Kandaswamy, senior director at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India.
According to him, the popularity of automatic vehicles suggests an ever so rising number of women drivers in the country in the coming days.