• Search the Site
• 
  

• Categories

  • Apple (14)
  • Cell Phones (10)
  • Financial (4)
  • General Site News (2)
  • MP3 Players (11)
  • Networking (2)
  • PC's (2)
  • Renewable Energy Stuff (1)
  • Retail (11)
  • Satellite Radio (2)
  • Search (1)
  • Uncategorized (4)
  • Video Games (11)
  • WiMax (3)

• Archives

  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • March 2007
  • January 2007
  • November 2006
  • October 2006

• Subscribe

  Entries RSS
  Comments RSS

We recently conducted a survey of 30 auto dealerships around the U.S. and asked questions about the best selling car models, the impact of high gas prices on truck and SUV sales and deals for Satellite Radio. The responses to the final question were the most interesting. There was no consensus about best selling car but gas prices were reported by 67% of respondents to being a factor in slowing sales of trucks and SUV’s.

We called six Toyota dealers which makes Toyota the most heavily represented brand in our survey at 20%. Four claimed there are good deals for satellite radio in a new car while two said their were not. Out of our four positive respondents all mentioned XM. One rep told us that a Toyota Corolla comes with six months free service to XM while another Toyota rep told us that free XM was on select models, including the Camry.

At Keller Ford in Grand Rapids, Michigan we were told that any new car or truck purchased came with a free installation of XM Satellite. Another Ford dealer stated that most new models and even many used models had satellite radio options now. A Saturn Ion comes with a free year of OnStar and XM Satellite Radio and a Pontiac G6 comes with a free year of Sirius service according to our dealer checks. Finally, a Jeep Unlimited 4-door being sold by an Ohio dealer came with a free two month subscription to Sirius Satellite service.

15 out of our 30 dealerships reported special offers of free installation or service for some form of satellite radio. It seems to us that the satellite radio option could be on the way to becoming a standard feature. It may be the limited nature of our survey or the weighting towards Toyota, but when a specific service was mentioned for satellite radio, XM was mentioned in 75% of the cases. Some multi-branded dealers mentioned both services but generally we got feedback on good deals involving XM more often than Sirius.

We have completed our first survey on the satellite radio competitors. Sirius looks like the winner although we must note that we did include responses from Radio Shack, which only sells Sirius and not XM. Sirius was recommended by 60% of our respondents while XM was favored by 30%. 10% of respondents said either service was fine or the two services were equal.Our survey questions were the following:

Which satellite radio service should I get - XM Satellite or Sirius Satellite?

Which service is selling better?Are there hot deals or discounts associated with either service?

After scrubbing the data it looks like the Radio Shack effect, did not drive a large discepenancy in our data because amazingly at 10% of the Radio Shack’s we called actually recommended XM!!! This despite the fact that they sell only Sirius service and receivers. These Radio shack employees must be personal users of XM outside their day to day duties of promoting Sirius.
Another revealing trend we saw in our research that multiple survey participants reported that while Sirius still seems to be selling better in terms of total number the difference between the two services has narrowed substantially. These respondents reported that at this time last year Sirius dominated new subscriber activations but that this year the tallies run much closer to 50-50. This reporting was consistent across the survey that the two services are close to even in consumer preference.
Sirius was generally deemed better because of popular content like Howard Stern, NASCAR and the NFL. XM content was favored by those who said it has more music selections and content and in Montreal offers more French stations which made it the preference there. All in all it looks like Sirius should outpace XM in terms of new subscriber additions this year in 4Q. We’ll re-visit this survey in December and see how our precition is playing out.