Businesses Covered

The Sewells Bodyshop Opinion Survey discovers what body repairers think and feel about the companies they deal with every day. This year the Bodyshop Opinion Survey looks at:

• Insurance companies
• Accident management companies, fleet managers and fleets
• Car manufacturers and importers
• Paint companies
• Paint distributors and factors
• Bodyshop estimating systems and suppliers
• Courtesy car suppliers

The Bodyshop Opinion Survey is primary research and is essential for every organisation operating in, or supplying body repairers.

Whilst the principal focus of the 2007 Sewells Bodyshop Opinion Survey is, as always, measuring industry relationships, it is the continuing fall in real-terms market value that stands out this year. Almost certainly as a direct consequence, this year’s survey also records further falls in the number of UK bodyshops.

467 repairers took part in this year’s Bodyshop Opinion Survey, giving their views on their relationships with work providers, paint distributors and factors, paint companies, estimating systems/suppliers, courtesy car suppliers and carmakers.

Since the 1999 survey, body repairers have expressed falling satisfaction with everyday relationships, which reached a low in 2004. Since 2004 satisfaction has leveled off or improved, and across all sectors (excluding courtesy cars) the average overall satisfaction is up by 0.5 points to 69% between 2004 and 2007. But this general level is still somewhat lower than in earlier surveys when over 70% was recorded in the surveys from 1996 to 2001.

Survey respondents rated their relationship with insurance companies slightly higher between 2004 and 2007. Similarly satisfaction with estimating systems/suppliers and accident managers was up 2004/2007, and satisfaction with paint companies was virtually unchanged. Paint distributors, car manufacturers and courtesy car suppliers all saw slight falls in satisfaction between 2004 and 2007.

In eight out of the nine times that Sewells has published the Bodyshop Opinion Survey, paint distributors and factors have topped the satisfaction ratings – including this year. Only in 1997 did paint companies usurp their ‘number 1’ position. But this year is the first time distributors/factors have not achieved an overall average satisfaction rating of over 80 out of 100, although at 79.6% it is still one of the highest-rated sectors in the retail motor industry. Clearly body repairers believe they are nice people to do business with.

The survey found that the market for body repairs had fallen in real terms for the fifth year running since its peak in 2001. The fall of 11% means the market is heading toward its lowest real-terms value since 1987. This can be explained by a fall in the amount of work required by insurance companies and accident management companies. In 1997, insurers and accident managers accounted for 84% of the market value whereas in 2006 this had fallen to 76%. Undoubtedly the fall-off in insurer and accident manager work is partly because of an increase in the number of vehicles written off as residual values have fallen. The effect has been a fall in the number of jobs provided by these sources of over 15% since 2000. Another factor has been the average size of insurer/accident manager jobs in terms of labour-hours, which have fallen from 18 sold hours per job in 2000 to less than 17 sold hours in 2006. This phenomenon could also be because of write-offs.

The 2007 Bodyshop Opinion Survey also highlights the continuing fall in the numbers of UK bodyshops. Since 1997 over 50% of the UK’s bodyshops have closed. While this fall in bodyshop numbers might seem ultimately damaging, it is the fortunes of primary bodyshops that really matters. They are the backbone of the industry and carry out over 80% of the work. Primary bodyshops are bodyshops where body repairs are the main business, although it is traditional to include franchised bodyshops as well.

Sewells estimates that there are presently 4,070 primary bodyshops operating in the UK - 3,080 independents and 990 franchised. In 1996/97 there were 6,300, however the rate of closure has slowed considerably, and taking this into account the number of primary bodyshops will probably fall to 3,480 by 2012, which might not prove to be a problem.