Korean manufacturer Kia is seeking frank customer reviews as part of a New Year marketing campaign focused on its public perception.
The website of Kia Motors UK now hosts over 3,000 customer reviews – "genuine, unfiltered, independently-verified owner reviews", according to the company – across 10 models available.
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The comments have been garnered since Spring 2012 in partnership with independent third-partner review website Reevoo, which also has automotive partnerships with Ford Retail, What Car?, and Manheim-owned motors.co.uk.
Kia’s retail operation has been buoyed by surpassing its own prediction of 65,000 new registrations for 2012, and announced ambitions to sell 70,000 new units in 2013, open a West London dealership in 2014, and eventually become a brand recording 100,000 annual UK new registrations.
On the finance side, now run through a joint-venture between sister-brand Hyundai and Santander Consumer Finance, Kia has begun the year a PCP and deposit-contribution offer on its Rio model.
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By GlobalDataRoland Schaack, managing director of Stafford-based software developers Codeweavers, recently visited Reevoo to ask about the possibility of exposing car finance to the same scrutiny by consumer review.
Schaack said asking every Kia purchaser via e-mail to submit a review, with a high percentage agreeing to do so, has brought a high level of social interaction to the brand.
Although unsure of finance companies’ appetite for honest consumer reviews, Schaack saw a benefit in building customers’ understanding of products into the functionality of finance websites.
"If somebody was unsure about HP," explained Schaack, "he or she would be able to ask someone else who had already used hire purchase or had used that company, or to ask how PCP works, or to find out ‘what happens when I hand the car back?’
"The answer would come from somebody who had experience of that product. It would add confidence to people using dealers’ websites looking for finance options."
richard.brown@timetric.com
