How Japanese choose cars?

Because this blog is in English, I do not think many Japanese read it: I will tell you what Japanese people, who have bought cars from JPC, check when they choose cars.

Generally, when Japanese people decide to buy a car from us, they contact us after checking all the pros & cons on the internet or from car magazines, or actually having test driven the car. Basically, we at JPC do not have stock and buy cars at auction on their behalf according to the order. After considering everything, they decide that buying a car at auction is the best way and they choose us because they can trust us and our service. However, as I said, we do not have stock, this is the process our customers take after checking all the information and they decide on the type or model of car themselves.

From here is the main part of today’s issue. When people decide to actually purchase the car, the reasons for their final decision differ by their age.

Firstly, young single males: Mostly, their main purpose of buying a car is to take girls out. So they choose sport cars, SUV and mini-vans which are suitable for special day-outs with a girl. They buy them impulsively and almost 80% use car loans.

Next a couple with children (having them or already had them): husbands usually choose a car and the wives just follow. Most of them choose family-friendly cars such as SUV, wagons and mini-vans. The main point is enough luggage space they need because of having children. However, young couples are not that wealthy, they do not buy expensive cars. They do not care so much how the car looks and decide based on its practicality. They have a sound financial plan, so not many use car loans.

Then, by the time children start at kindergarten, some of the couples with children who had bought their cars conservatively decide to buy new ones. They sometimes want to buy imports. At kindergarten, they all go home at the same time, so there is a chance of checking each other out. “A’s parents have an expensive foreign car”, one of the parents might start a conversation, then it is usually the wife who would ask her husband if they can buy a new car. They just want to out-do each other, the world of showing-off but when even a wife who does not care about cars sees someone else driving a Mercedes Benz, she thinks that the other mum must be rich; and of course the mum who is in the car want others to think about her like that. Women who take their babies to day care centre do not care about cars so much because their home time is different. Data suggests that in the Setagaya Ward, where the richest people in Japan reside, the largest numbers of people own Mercedes Benz per family in the world. (In fact, we have sold a lot of expensive imports to people in the ward. We are lucky to have an area like this to make money but people like myself think it must be hard to live there … Is it just my jaundiced view? )

When the numbers of children in a household increase from 1 or 2 to 3, most people buy 7-8 seater mini-vans. Most people think about someone else other than their family, such as their parents to travel all together in a car. The features people want for these cars are sliding doors and navigation systems. Sliding doors are indispensable for mums with young children when their hands are full and a navigation system is a must-have item for weekend drives. Another popular feature is a sun roof. For children before school age, who have too much curiosity, it is fun to stick their heads through the sun roof, and although this is extremely dangerous, we cannot win against their smiles, can we? When we have this sort of family structure, a mini-van is not just for convenience but they want to value the time they spend together.

When people are single, cars are just a way of self-expression, then once we have wives and children, the cars become an important communication tool with our family and friends. Also young shy girls turn into tough “Mamas” who will take charge in choosing cars one day.

This is the pattern we see in Japanese people we have dealt with when it comes to car purchases. What is it like in your country?



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(Editor)
JPC TRADE CO.,LTD.
3B YS-Building, 1-2-2 Botan, Koto-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Japan Used Motor Vehicle Exporters Association (JUMVEA)
TEL : +81-3-5245-7731
FAX : +81-3-3643-4955