The battery gets replaced once before anyone has a choice
A global battery manufacturer needed to understand the first replacement market in Europe: its size, its structure and its competitive dynamics.
Specifically, the part of it flowing through OEM authorised service channels, and where the opportunity sat to grow OEM and premium technology share against the independent aftermarket.
That is two questions wearing one coat. One is about channel share. The other is about which battery gets fitted when the channel does hold.
Eight weeks, four countries, and more than a hundred workshops
The programme ran eight weeks, with more than a hundred structured face to face interviews with OEM authorised workshop and service centre personnel across the UK, Belgium, France and Germany.
The sample was stratified by dealer size and by vehicle brand affiliation, because a large multi franchise site and a single brand workshop are not the same business.
Channel economics came first: how much first replacement demand is retained in network against how much is lost to independents, and the specific triggers behind that leakage. Warranty expiry, price and convenience.
Battery replacement splits by technology as well as by channel. Technology mix was measured as fitment rates of SLI against EFB against AGM, across ICE, hybrid, EV auxiliary and LCV categories, alongside dealer willingness to upsell. An enablement audit recorded training completion, margin structure, marketing toolkits and point of sale branding at each workshop.
Five leading brands were benchmarked on price, warranty terms and dealer support. Mystery shop visits to a subset of workshops then checked stated behaviour against actual upsell behaviour.
What keeps the work in network, and what gets an AGM battery fitted
The programme produced the channel economics behind first replacement, with the leakage triggers named rather than assumed.
It produced the technology mix by category, and the dealer willingness to upsell that sits behind any attempt to move it.
And the enablement audit showed what each workshop actually had to work with, which is usually the difference between a strategy and a slide about one.
The client took away a strategy recommending warranty linked loyalty programmes, better dealer point of sale tools and battery specific training. The technology upgrade conversation was positioned as a new revenue lever at first replacement rather than as a product message.
