| Honda’s comparator simply doesn’t compare |
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Honda has launched a new online comparison tool that it says, “enables any customer or potential customer to compare Honda cars against any other car in the market and calculate the potential savings on offer.” It is a bold move to publicly pit your product against its competitors and this speaks volumes in terms of Honda’s confidence in its range of cars. I’d say that confidence is not misplaced either, as it took me a few minutes to find 4 cars (comment if you’d like to know what they are) to line up alongside a Jazz that would place the baby Honda last in terms of whole life running costs. However, I do find myself wondering why Honda, and other car manufacturers, bother creating such tools at all since modern-day consumers (and car buyers in particular) are simply too savvy to rely on information provided by vendors. Some will be sceptical that data is presented in a fair and balanced way, but even the more trusting will simply carry out their research on good-quality independent websites with no conflict of interests. Tom Gardner, Head of Marketing – Cars for Honda (UK) says, “We want to support retail and corporate customers by helping them make an informed purchase decision based on the issues that are relevant to them. The car comparator enables the customer to do this with impartial, third party data.” Even if the data is supplied by an impartial third party, the primary goal of a car manufacturer’s website is to promote and ultimately sell that manufacturer’s cars. So when it comes to displaying comparison data to the potential customer, Honda, as you might expect, lists all the standard features on its own product above those of its competitors. This is not in the best interests of the customer who would truly benefit from seeing the features listed in terms of relevance… I simply cannot imagine what kind of car buyer deems a digital clock to be more important than power steering. Honda’s advertising is renowned for taking an intelligent approach. Perhaps it should credit its customers with a little more of the same.
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