Executive summary
The automotive industry is facing a major period of transformation, including automation and electrification. The digitalization of customer purchasing behaviors and the entry of foreign companies are intensifying competition. Inside this environment, Subaru is increasing its sales numbers by integrating various data scattered across departments and dealerships within the company and utilizing them for marketing and advertising. By introducing Treasure Data Customer Data Platform (CDP), Subaru has realized a data-driven marketing strategy across the whole company. We asked Mr. Atsushi Yasumuro, Chief of the Marketing Promotion Department, Advertising Division, at Subaru’s Domestic Sales Headquarters, about their initiatives.
Key points of this case study
- Utilized Treasure Data CDP for company-wide data integration, analyzing customer purchasing behavior, and realizing sales expansion.
- Achieved a 14.5x increase in advertising efficiency through the use of CDP for hypothesis testing and verification.
- Improved ROI with 1:1 marketing by utilizing scenario features
Challenge: How to make customers want to buy?
Since its founding, Subaru has prioritized safety. This philosophy is carried over into its car manufacturing, including the world’s first driver assistance system using stereo cameras, “EyeSight,” and other technology focused on safety and security, which has been highly praised worldwide.
On the other hand, Mr. Atsushi Yasumuro says, “Marketing in the automotive industry has become quite difficult these days, and marketing strategies cannot be realized without understanding the customers.”
“Recent cars are less likely to break down, resulting in a much longer replacement frequency of around once every ten years. Additionally, in a mature market where the population is declining, and the price of vehicles is increasing, competition is fierce not only domestically but also with foreign companies.”
“Manufacturers are fiercely competing.”
With the spread of the internet and the progression of digitalization, the touchpoints with customers have changed significantly.
“There are hardly any customers who consider purchasing without doing preliminary research on the internet. The number of visits to dealers has drastically decreased to two times or less. I call it ‘the invisible tournament’. By the time customers visit the dealership, the outcome is almost decided. Subaru has to be among the brands in the evoked set that customers consider buying, and furthermore, it has to survive the competition. To do this, understanding our customers becomes extremely important, and we thought of creating a data foundation that could respond to this.”
What kind of data sources were integrated?
“The data sources range across online, offline, and various areas. Data owned not only by several departments within the company but also by external dealers was integrated.”
Specifically, this includes behavioral logs from various websites, online shops, subscriptions, online negotiations, as well as information from core systems such as customer information entered by dealers, Wi-Fi logs at stores, test drive event logs, campaign logs, etc. Other data acquisitions include catalog requests, survey responses, data from a smartphone app for owners named “My Subaru,” and activity logs from the driving app “SUBAROAD.” Many types of data are being acquired.
“By linking these various data to a single ID named ‘SUBARU ID,’ we keep in touch with our customers,” says Mr. Yasumuro. Even if the car replacement cycle is once every ten years, maintaining touchpoints during that period allows for understanding the customer journey and aims to increase LTV (Lifetime Value).
To make group-wide data integration possible, Subaru chose Treasure Data.
Treasure Data CDP was selected primarily for its ease of data integration. Even though data integration is straightforward to say, there exists a wide variety of data in many places, including external dealers and advertising agencies. At the time, each piece of data was stored separately, and even just integrating it into “SUBARU ID” was challenging. However, with Treasure Data CDP, it is possible to collect and integrate data seamlessly without impacting the dealer’s core systems or other tools.
Mr. Yasumuro also speaks highly of Treasure Data’s support system. “Back then, Treasure Data was a young venture company established by three Japanese people in Silicon Valley. Its headquarters is in the United States, but the support of the Japanese corporation was thoughtful, and they supported us as one team. Their passion for understanding what we wanted to do and responding quickly was very reassuring.”
