Comparison of Estimates of Proprietary and Syndicated Methods in Auto Industry Surveys

Proprietary and syndicate surveys of J.D. Power & Associates are often used in assessing appeal and initial quality of new vehicles for automobile manufactures. When the two types of surveys are conducted using different or partially different new vehicle owner registrations, it is not clear whether the results are compared appropriately. This study discusses the difference between the two types of studies, and proposes a computer simulation based method for checking the appropriateness of using the syndicated study to predict future scores of J.D Power general study. Simulated examples are also included.