Tim's Z4 Pages - Z3 owners survey
 
     
What do Z3 owners want to see in the next-gen Z3?

During the 1999 Homecoming, BMW hosted an owners’ clinic to obtain feedback on various aspects of the Z3. The clinic had been publicised in advance and before flying over to the US I asked other UK owners if there were any points they would like me to ask about, so I arrived at Spartanburg with a fairly long list.

A questionnaire was handed out as we entered the room. I whizzed through it, ticking boxes and writing responses whilst others were still entering the room. Hardly any of the items on my list were covered in the questionnaire so I waited patiently for the moderator to start the open session. Unfortunately the remainder of the clinic was taken up with a painfully slow explanation of how to complete the questionnaire and there was practically no time available for any participants to raise additional points.

This is the first truism of marketing surveys--they rarely pose the questions you want to be asked. And when they do, the possible reply options don’t fit in with your response.

Although most owners are well pleased with their roadster I am sure many could rattle off a shortlist of things they would like to see fixed with a Nachfolger (next-generation) Z3. I felt that BMW had missed a golden opportunity during the 1999 Homecoming to get valuable marketing information from participants. What a bummer if they didn't fix some of the simple things in the next generation! So what could be done before it was too late?

Gathering the survey ideas
Rather than designing my own survey I decided to establish a message board so that people could pose their own suggestions, as well as responding to other people's ideas. More than 250 messages were posted suggesting improvements and other ideas. After merging some very similar suggestions, this boiled down to 142 suggestions that I grouped under headings such as style, size, engine, stereo, etc. The next stage was to create a voting form which gave people the chance to rate each of the suggestions as either

    strongly disagree   1 point
    disagree            3 points
    neutral about it    5 points
    agree               7 points 
 or strongly agree      9 points.

Analysing voting patterns
David Miles helped on the backend database routines to store the responses on the web server. The survey opened in February 2001, however I decided to prematurely terminated the exercise in early March. Some realistic looking spy shots of a new non-retro Z3 had appeared in Europe and I felt they might artifically bias the input. By then a total of 182 responses had been were collected and stored on a database on the web server. I downloaded the database, produced spreadsheets showing the voting patterns, and forwarded all the files to BMW Munich and Spartanburg for their consideration.

Survey voting results
While some of the response patterns were predictable, there were a few surprises. Of course, people responded based on their own experience--if they have an older Z3 they might highly rate some points that BMW considers already fixed in the latest models. The top twenty vote scorers are shown below. The 'average' score is calculated based on the 1-3-5-7-9 scoring. Above 7 is a very strong mark, below 5 is effectively a negative.

    1. Maintain retro styling and low side profile                     (7.68)
    2. Higher quality base speakers that don't distort                 (7.27)
    3. Keep small, light and nimble                                    (7.26)
    4. Reduce vulnerability to stone chips                             (7.26)
    5. Don't reduce trunk storage                                      (7.08)
    6. Improve premium Harmon/Kardon upgrade--weak, rattle             (6.98)
    7. Softtop that retracts under a proper cover rather than boot     (6.94)
    8. Reduce squeaks and rattles, especially glove box area           (6.91)
    9. Xenon headlights                                                (6.91)
   10. Replace trailing-arm rear suspension with modern design         (6.84)
   11. Improve rear plastic screen clarity and quality                 (6.83)
   12. Softtop that doesn't mark, wear out, or leak                    (6.79)
   13. Footwell and glove box lights                                   (6.76)
   14. Easier replacement procedure for plastic window                 (6.71)
   15. Adjustable rake and reach steering column                       (6.71)
   16. Stiffer body shell                                              (6.70)
   17. Individual program--greater choice of exterior/interior colors  (6.70)
   18. Lumbar adjustment in seats                                      (6.65)
   19. Standard strut brace                                            (6.61)
   20. Variable intermittent-speed wipers                              (6.54)
You can view 'original questions and scores' spreadsheet (Excel format) which shows the questions as they were presented to voters, plus the detailed voting patterns, for example question #1 recorded 58 agree, 99 strongly agree, etc. You can read quite a lot into these patterns--question #8 is a good example.

The 'ranked by score' spreadsheet is the same information but ranked by number of votes, showing not only the top 20 as above, but all results.

What good will come of the survey?
I view the survey as an interesting exercise in drawing a line in the sand. One of the biggest marketing mistakes is to ignore the fact that a high percentage of future business comes from existing customers. So whilst it's fine looking over the fence at the competition, trying to second guess their plans and steal their customers, you ignore your existing customer base at your peril. (lecture mode off)

The concept and design work for the next generation Z3 was completed long ago. OK, so it's going to be bigger and there's no way that can be changed. But there are many aspects that it is not too late for BMW to take notice of, such as fitting high-quality audio (2nd and 6th highest votes), reducing the size of the rear-view mirror and mounting it higher up.

Some of the suggestions can be implemented on the current model range--sports exhaust option, 4-cylinder engine for US market, more vibrant/fun color choices, and so forth. Indeed if the individual programme was available in the UK I might have bought another Z3 by now.

BMW has hinted the coupé will be killed off rather than continued in the next-generation range, yet one interesting idea is for a run of Type-R racing coupés.

As mentioned above, spy shots of a possible prototype non-retro Z3 circulated after the survey closed. Reactions from existing owners have been mainly negative. For the record, the survey proposal that received the absolutely lowest votes (2.94) was one to “drop retro style, explore cutting-edge style/technology”.

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Copyright Tim Cullis August 2001 and subsequent. All rights reserved


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