How Vase.ai Helped Carsome Increase Brand Awareness by 142% and Brand Differentiation by 167%
In 2015, Carsome launched an easy-to-use, holistic car selling platform. They faced immense challenges in establishing integrity, credibility, and authenticity as the public did not positively perceive used car dealerships. Its solutions bore initial feelings of distrust and questions of legitimacy. Carsome turned to Vase.ai to gain insights into how they could overcome these barriersProject Brief
Increase brand awareness and differentiation through improved messaging
About The Company
Carsome is Southeast Asia’s largest integrated car e-commerce platform. With presence across Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore, Carsome aims to digitalize the region’s used car industry by reshaping and elevating the car buying and selling experience. Carsome provides end-to-end solutions to consumers and used car dealers, from car inspection to ownership transfer to financing, promising a service that is trusted, convenient and efficient.
What did Vase.ai solve for Carsome?
"THEY HELPED US CONNECT WITH OUR CONSUMERS" - Through ongoing online surveys, we were able to analyse the tone in which consumers responded positively towards and then connect better with them through our marketing messages
"WE LEARNED MORE ABOUT CONSUMER PROBLEMS" - The used car dealership industry has been perceived negatively for a long time now. From the survey, we were able to better understand consumer concerns
"EFFECTIVE MEASUREMENT OF SUCCESS RATES" - With Vase.ai's 360° Consumer Feedback Loop strategy, we were able to effectively measure the success rates of our marketing strategies
The challenge
An online study carried out by Vase.ai in September 2018 revealed that only a fraction of consumers in the Klang Valley were aware of the Carsome brand, while a lower number of consumers were ready to try out Carsome's services.
Given this gap, Carsome recognised that one of the main barriers was the trust factor of used car dealerships. To improve this, Carsome needed insights on consumer concerns and issues that consumers were experiencing with existing vendors and platforms that are perceived as competing solutions to Carsome.
To highlight a few:
- Lack of brand awareness and familiarity of Carsome's solutions among customers in Klang Valley
- The limited understanding and scope of Carsome's services and benefits
- Lack of understanding and trust of how Carsome differs from other car selling services
- Lack of understanding of consumer problems and concerns when selling or trading in their vehicles
- The distrust consumers currently have towards used car dealerships extended to Carsome
The Solution!
Carsome needed an agile solution that enables them to learn, iterate and measure their implementation continuously. Carsome worked with Vase.ai to run several waves of online market research studies. The design of each survey was to find out consumer behaviours and the patterns in awareness, knowledge and spotting any seasonal factors that may be driving consumers' decisions.
- Brand awareness - Improve brand awareness and familiarity of Carsome's solutions among consumers in the Klang Valley
- Education - Find avenues to educate consumers on how Carsome differs from other car selling services (e.g Carlist, Mudah, and used car dealers)
- Consumer concerns - Carsome to gain insights into current and potential consumer problems when selling or trading in vehicles
- Industry perception - Strategy to change the current perception consumers have towards used car dealerships
The Delivery:
- Vase.ai's 360° Consumer Feedback Loop process - Vase.ai proposed that Carsome apply a holistic consumer feedback loop approach in order to learn, implement and measure their strategies effectively
- Learning & Understanding of consumer problems - In efforts to alter the perception of used car dealerships, Carsome focused on consumer pain points and addressed those concerns. It was important for them to learn what consumers were experiencing with existing vendors
- Measuring success rate & effectiveness - The insights gained from the Online Surveys provided Carsome with strategic communicative methods which shed light on awareness and understanding of solutions offered by Carsome
- Curation of categorical questions aimed to understand patterns in consumer behaviour, effective communicative methods and platforms - Vase.ai divided the research studies into four categories, employing four segregated sections in the questionnaire to uncover specific learnings - consumer personas, brand perception, brand familiarity & profiling, and sellers behaviour, preferences & challenges
The Results
- Brand awareness - Increased by 142% across 4 phases
- Brand differentiation - Increased by 167% across 4 phases
“The Vase.ai team’s understanding of Carsome's business challenges helped shape an impactful and insightful research study.”
“We used the responses from the research to understand how to better communicate with consumers and make more effective decisions on advertising channels. We have been using the results from the surveys to revise our advertising budget allocations each quarter. We made decisions to abort certain ads and invest more in others. Our communication with consumers has also shifted to focus more on their problems and concerns.“
Janice Chin
- Former Regional Director for Marketing & Product