Are you missing out on half your market?
Finding the barriers to buying EVs, and how to overcome them, for Auto Trader.
We were asked to find the barriers to buying EVs and how to overcome them. You can read a summary of the outcomes below and see Auto Trader’s full report and a fantastic conversation on Woman’s Hour by following the links.
Our principles for bringing missing audiences to market
- Don’t assume: start with an open mind about what the barriers could be
- Listen: to people in their own environment, context and life
- Speak to the whole market, not just your missing audiences: find all the barriers, then understand how your missing audience experiences them
- Learn from the successful: speak to customers who overcame the barriers, not just rejectors
- Show solutions: don’t just talk about what went wrong, come up with ideas that could fix it
The process
- Stage 1, Foundation: in-home research with both men and women who either bought or rejected buying an EV, to understand the purchase journey and identify barriers to buying
- Stage 2, Solution: develop solutions to overcome these barriers
- Stage 3, Strategy: understand exactly how barriers are experienced by women, refine and test the solutions in focus groups
The findings
Barriers that exist for everyone purchasing an EV are even more pronounced for the women we spoke to. They’re more drawn to familiar makes and models, more focused on ‘comfort’ and mod cons, more risk averse and quicker to imagine what could go wrong when purchasing electric vehicles (Does charging make it less practical in an emergency? Can I still be spontaneous? Does the price mean compromising on brand, size or performance?).
They also feel at a disadvantage during the purchase and research process, having to navigate a world built by and for male car enthusiasts, and often less able to rely on their base knowledge or advice from friends and family. It also became clear that EV options need to be ‘baked in’ right from the start of the consideration journey. If they look at EVs after they decide on brand and type, they’ll find out too late that the electric version is more expensive – meaning either changing their budget or taking a big risk on a model that feels smaller or less kitted out than the one they’d decided on. For the risk-averse women in our sample this means that if EVs aren’t considered from the outset, they’re likely to be dismissed.
The strategy
Strikingly, women’s worries often aren’t borne out if they actually buy an EV. Most purchasers don’t experience any of the issues they’re worried about when they’re looking to buy. There’s a big opportunity for suppliers: neutralise these specific worries and emphasise the (real, proven) benefits of electric vehicle ownership for women. The report highlighted four key ways to do this, with detailed guidance and action points for making electric vehicles more attractive, especially for women:
- Make them feel ‘must-have’ (building presence in relatable spaces, make test-driving more female-friendly)
- Make them feel affordable (reframe leasing and ‘affordability criteria’)
- Make them feel less risky (reassure on charging infrastructure, provide missing information like minimum driving range)
- Make purchase hassle-free (home charging packages, bring to life the long-term money and carbon savings at point of purchase)
