REV #001: Lookout for Lexus, Elite 0.2%, National Brand Popularity Map

[jakehughes]

Welcome to the first issue of the REV. A briefing that goes deep into Widewail Automotive Reputation Index data, surfacing the most interesting insights. Every 3 weeks we Rank, Explore & Visualize automotive reputation & sentiment data.

All data is sourced from the Widewail Automotive Reputation Index (unless noted). The Index aggregates over 1.6 million Google reviews from 16k new car dealerships in the U.S. Customize the dataset like it’s your own personal spreadsheet. It’s free. Try it out.

Subscribe to The REV.

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RANK​

Flexus​

Lexus customers really do “Experience Amazing”

Lexus is a real reputation standout here - its dealerships generate 20 new reviews per month per location on average. It’s especially impressive when looking at its with YTD sales of 223,000, a fraction of Toyota’s 1,383,000 sales, as an example. Review volume is directly related to opportunity (i.e. sales) highlighting Lexus’s wild efficiency.

Yes, the national average reviews/month is 9, but the luxury benchmark is 6.8, putting Lexus 300% ahead of the luxury market.

And get this, 17 of the top 40 highest review volume luxury dealerships in the US are Lexus. That’s a 42% share.

Looking below at luxury brands, Lexus is near the top in every reputation category.



Visit the Index and filter or group by “brand.” Go to Index.

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​

Explore​

The Elite 0.2%​

If we zero in on the elite dealerships generating >200 reviews/month on average this year, 34 rooftops remain. The “Elite 0.2% of review activity.”

All Eyes on Florida, Texas & Georgia
Of those 34, 26 come from 3 states: Florida (14), Texas (8), and Georgia (4). The South accounts for 85% of the list with 29 dealerships.

Toyota Dominates Elite 0.2%
For brands, Toyota accounts for close to half the list with 16 dealerships generating 200+ reviews/month in 2023.

America’s Review King
Longo Toyota out of El Monte California tops the Index nationally with a staggering average of 466 Google reviews a month in 2023. That’s an impressive 15 per day.

Browse Elite 0.2%. Go to Index.

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Visualize​

Put It On A Map​

Below, we’ve mapped the dealerships with the best reputation in every county. The brand sold by the dealership with the best reputation performance shows up on the map.

Learn more about Widewail’s ranking methodology.



So, that's The REV, a new data newsletter from Widewail. I'll be doing a new article every 3 weeks. What do you want to see?

The datasource for this article is the Widewail Automotive Reputation Index. It includes reputation data for 16,700 dealers and we will be updating it quarterly to start.

If I had to pick a place to start, I'd recommend filtering by your state and the brand(s) you sell and then sorting the "Volume Per Month (Avg)" column from high to low. With that, you can see your state ranking based on review activity. For a more specific look at your market, filter by City (you may have to select a few). I've also included 9 common use cases each with tutorials to get you started. So try it out (it's free)!

And to subscribe to the REV to get it in your inbox, do so here.

Jake

 

[joe.pistell]

love to see:
Tough Towns: Top 10 Cities with the lowest avg ranks.
(and the high scoring "Dealer Outliers" that stand out in those towns)

 

[jakehughes]

love to see:
Tough Towns: Top 10 Cities with the lowest avg ranks.
(and the high scoring "Dealer Outliers" that stand out in those towns)

Hey Joe - love this idea, will put it into the brainstorming list.

You can get a taste for this if you go into the auto rep index and group by city, which will give you a quick look at the benchmark metrics for each city. Grouping acts like a pivot table. The issue with this is that from what I can tell you cannot sort groups by a given metric, so organizing them based on the performance of a given rep metric would take too long. We have the data in a spreadsheet offline as well so we could probably create a pivot table then sort.

The questions I have in my head are:

• What should be the minimum size city? There are hundreds of small cities in the index. One way to do that would be to require a minimum count of 3 dealerships in that city as an example. The data gets pretty skewed looking at a city with 1 dealership, for example.
• At the moment we don't have a universal reputation performance metric, so we'd have to focus on one of the primary four: average volume per month, average rating per month, negative percentage or response rate. I tend to default to volume per month. We could also look at rating but I'd likely want to put in place a minimum month volume of 3 reviews or something like that. Lots of dealers have 1 or 2 5 star reviews and it distracts from the dealerships with real standout or problematic performance.

Its a bit easier to get the data quickly looking at state-level. For example, South Dakota has the lowest average monthly volume of 2.6 google reviews and Iowa has 3.8. But looking at the ratings associated, SD is a 4.6 and IA is a 4.45. So lower populations may have an impact here.

We will research!

 

[NIOMARVIN83]

Hey there!

Just checked out the first issue of The REV – pretty cool stuff digging into all that data on car dealerships. It’s wild to see Lexus leading the pack with their review numbers, especially with fewer sales compared to Toyota. Shows they’re really nailing it with customer satisfaction.

The focus on those top-performing dealerships from Florida, Texas, and Georgia was an eye-opener too. And Toyota dominating that elite group? Impressive.

Longo Toyota's numbers are just mind-blowing. 466 reviews a month? That's like, everyone walking out of there is leaving a review.

Can't wait to see what's next. I’m all in for diving into more insights like this. Maybe something on how different regions compare or how reviews impact sales? Keep it coming!

Subscribed to keep up with the next one. Thanks for putting this together!

 

[jakehughes]

Hey there!

Just checked out the first issue of The REV – pretty cool stuff digging into all that data on car dealerships. It’s wild to see Lexus leading the pack with their review numbers, especially with fewer sales compared to Toyota. Shows they’re really nailing it with customer satisfaction.

The focus on those top-performing dealerships from Florida, Texas, and Georgia was an eye-opener too. And Toyota dominating that elite group? Impressive.

Longo Toyota's numbers are just mind-blowing. 466 reviews a month? That's like, everyone walking out of there is leaving a review.

Can't wait to see what's next. I’m all in for diving into more insights like this. Maybe something on how different regions compare or how reviews impact sales? Keep it coming!

Subscribed to keep up with the next one. Thanks for putting this together!

Love this - thanks so much!

I looked at regional ratings here: REV #002: Regional Rating Benchmarks, Import vs. Domestic OEMs, Response Rate Impact. There's more I could do with regional comparisons, will think about it and let me know if you have any ideas.

Reviews impact on sales - our data is all post transaction, so I'm hesitant to force any connections there. We know generally more reviews and better feedback sends positive signals to google which increases visibility and likely drives more traffic. Site traffic is outside our field of view, so tracking this down would be the job of the onsite marketer most likely. There may also be some opportunity to connect the dots with the help of CDPs.

REV 9 comes out 4/25. At the moment we are digging deeper into topic data for each OEM. we will likely put together a slimmed down version of the Brand Scorecard early in May.

I'll let the REV audience know when that is out, so you should be all set! thanks again

 

[jakehughes]

love to see:
Tough Towns: Top 10 Cities with the lowest avg ranks.
(and the high scoring "Dealer Outliers" that stand out in those towns)

thinking i might come back to this one soon for the newsletter.
also check out our city rankings articles Automotive Local Markets | Dealer Reputation and Competitive Analysis