BrandSurvey 2022 Sneak Peak: Caterpillar

Of the total 52644 replies received in LECTURA online survey from 8th September to 15th November 2021, Caterpillar received 3951 reviews from 170 countries from all around the world. That makes Caterpillar the most often reviewed brand of this survey. Most replies were received from the United States (probably due to the US origins and long-time tradition), followed by Canada in second place and Austria.

1. How do you consider this brand to be in general?
 

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In this survey, a vast majority of respondents (62.7%) claim Caterpillar to be the brand of premium quality. About 20% would consider it better of a medium, and 20% of respondents think Caterpillar is rather a brand of basic quality. On a scale from 1 as the basic level to 5 as the premium level, the mean value 3.87 represents people perceiving the brand quality on upper levels. Simply 6 from 10 survey respondents rated the brand as of premium quality, and only 2 from 10 people rated the brand as of a basic quality speaking for a general satisfaction with evaluated brands.

Since the above-discussed results are from the global data, it would be interesting to see the differences in the brand evaluation in different regions. On a scale from 1 (basic brand) to 3 (premium brand), the best evaluation was received in North American and Oceanic countries – as the graph depicts, for each, almost 70% of people described Caterpillar as the premium brand. On the contrary, respondents from Asian and South American countries most frequently claimed Caterpillar to be a basic brand. Such results do not appear to be surprising due to the US origin of Caterpillar.

2. How would you rate this brand's dealership network in your country?
 

According to the survey results, Caterpillar’s dealership network is in general being perceived as a positive and satisfactory brand, because over 90% respondents rated the brand’s dealership possibilities in their own country somewhat satisfactory or better. Moreover, almost 50% of the survey participants ranked CAT as a brand with a very satisfactory dealership network.

Only 9.2% of respondents think that there is a huge space for improvement and indicated the American manufacturer’s number of dealers in general as unsatisfactory. Out of those, just 3.7% marked CAT as a very unsatisfactory company regarding its dealership network.

Regarding specific regions and countries, the most satisfied respondents come from West Europe (France, Italy, Spain, Germany), North America, China and partially also South America (Venezuela, Colombia) and Africa (Libya, Chad or Morocco). On the other hand, the two last mentioned continents together with Eastern Europe also show that there is still room for improvement.

3. Where do you mostly look for information about this brand and its products/services?
 

According to 53.3% of respondents, the most frequently used source of information about Caterpillar is its website. This reflects the reliability and guarantee of up-to-date articles and news on the manufacturer’s website. The second most popular source of data among Caterpillar’s audience are equipment specs portals/encyclopaedias, chosen by 16.8% survey participants. Equipment specifications seem to be an important piece of machinery data and such specialized websites are often encountered by Caterpillar’s visitors. 

About the same percentage of respondents, 13.6% and 12.8%, stated that they search information about CAT in specialized media and via their network of contacts, respectively. It indicates that the importance of specialized magazines and digital media is still quite big, however, respondents would rather visit the manufacturer’s website. To sum up, respondents clearly showed an interest in digital possibilities regarding the acquisition of data for Caterpillar machines, which may be affected due to the pandemic situation as the option of personal contact remains limited.

4. Which one? (Specialized media + Equipment specs portals/encyclopaedias)
 

As analysed in the previous question result, 13.6% of respondents prefer to look up information about Caterpillar brand in specialized media and 16.8% on equipment specs portals and encyclopaedias. We asked them to specify such portals and media: 81.5% of survey participants stated to pick LECTURA prior to any other source, which means that 4 out of 5 users prefer LECTURA. We are happy with this finding that supports the fact that our audience of LECTURA Specs has grown by 50% in the last two years and the Buyers Guide is currently visited by over 1 million users per month.

5. How do you consider this brand to be visible in the media?
 

Almost 50% of surveyees claimed that Caterpillar is frequently visible in various kinds of specialized media. There is no doubt that CAT focuses on visibility among media, be it either printed or digital ones. Moreover, 22.4% of participants stated that CAT is frequently visible in one of specialized media and 14.4.% respondents announce CAT to be at least sporadically visible in just one of specialized media – bringing the total brand awareness in specialized media to 86.7%. 

On the other hand, 13.3% of respondents claimed that CAT has no visibility in specialized media at all and this number is not negligible. Many companies were forced to cut the budgets dedicated to promotional purposes due to the pandemics, which may or may not be the case of Caterpillar as well. Nevertheless, one would not expect such behaviour from one of the biggest heavy equipment manufacturers in the world and the reasons will remain pure speculation.