What motivates people to buy Four Wheel (4WD) or All Wheel Drive vehicles? With a price premium anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000 or more, it is an expensive option to just throw in. When we hear “4WD” we associate the term with driving in rugged off roading conditions or towing some enormous trailer along a dirt road. However, in reality the need may be much more practical – one of geography. So we wanted to investigate the relationship between geography and 4WD/AWD preference. In the Maritz New Vehicle Customer Study we ask customers how important certain attributes are in their buying decision. One of the questions we ask is how important is the availability of 4WD/AWD in the purchase decision.
Using two years of NVCS, the map below displays the opinions of over 400,000 new buyers and lessees who said that 4WD/AWD was “extremely important” in their new vehicle purchase decision. We then aggregated them to specific zip codes where they lived. Here’s what we got. On the map below the more green the dots the higher the percentage people are saying that 4WD/AWD is extremely important, the more red the dots, the less important. An interactive version is also available here.
Source: 2009-2010 Maritz NVCS
Does this look familiar? Well it should. If we overlay the map from the United States Geological Survey we can see some striking similarities.
As we can see, the higher the elevation the more likely there are people concerned about 4WD/AWD. That stands to reason – the more elevation, the more hilly terrain, the more likely to have snow and winter conditions, all seem to be closely associated with 4WD/AWD preference. Which also begs the question, what roll do hazardous road conditions play? Well, looking at a map from the US Department of Transportation, quite a bit.
We can see the DOT’s map of roads that experience snowy or icy conditions also nicely overlays on the desired need for 4WD/AWD from NVCS. So it turns out that consumers, rather than wanting 4WD/AWD for aspirational off-road needs or for prestige, do have very legitimate, rational reasons for wanting it in their vehicle.