Sales and Marketing
We regard ourselves as an innovative and sustainable mobility provider for all commercial and private customers worldwide – with a comprehensive product portfolio encompassing our brands and financial services.
The Volkswagen Group’s financial strength and profitability is attributable to an extensive portfolio of strong brands. We want to continuously sharpen the brand profiles and to distinguish as clearly as possible between the customer segments served by the brands, supplementing them as required with tailored solutions. Our aim is to achieve high market saturation with great efficiency and a low level of brand cannibalization. To this end, we have established automotive-specific customer segmentation to steer and improve the positioning of our brands.
As part of our Group strategy, we have placed a particular focus on China as the largest single market and on the regions of Western Europe and North America as the largest regions for the Volkswagen Group due to their considerable strategic importance. The Group strategy forms the basis for further developing our sales activities into those of a global technology and mobility provider with the aim of enabling us to provide an even more flexible and targeted response to our customers’ wishes and leverage additional revenue potential.
Together with their sales partners and importers, our passenger car brands agreed on a procedure for integrating state-of-the-art products and services into the sales network. The priority thereby is the safe and legally compliant handling of customer data and the way in which this is processed for digital products and services or in connection with the vehicle purchase. The legal requirements for handling customer data are strict. At the same time, the Group is launching a growing number of vehicles that are connected to the internet where available and depending on a vehicle’s features. We are increasingly investing in distribution systems and processes with the goal of further digitalizing and improving the individual customer experience in all distribution channels.
Customer Satisfaction, Customer Loyalty and Customer Conquest
The Volkswagen Group aims its sales activities at exciting its customers. This is our top priority, as satisfied customers remain loyal to our brands and recommend our products and services to others. To this end we measure customer satisfaction with our brands at different customer contact points and make it a subject of discussion at Board of Management committee meetings. In addition to satisfaction with our products and services, we value an emotional connection to our brands. It is important for us to retain customers and win new ones. To measure our success in this area, we compile and analyze suitable indicators for the passenger-car-producing brands: The loyalty rate represents the proportion of customers of our passenger car brands who have bought another Group model. Thanks to their faithful customers, the Volkswagen Passenger Cars, Škoda, Audi and Porsche brands have remained in the upper loyalty rankings of the core European markets in comparison with their competitors for a number of years. Compared to other manufacturer groups, the Volkswagen Group continues to hold a top spot in the core European markets in terms of loyalty. The conquest rate shows the share of newly acquired passenger car customers as a proportion of a brand-specific selection of competitors. Volkswagen Passenger Cars continues to have an industry-leading conquest rate. The Škoda, SEAT, and CUPRA brands improved their conquest rates in 2025, while the figures for Porsche were down slightly compared with the previous year.
The brand image of Volkswagen Passenger Cars was similar to the overall market level in the European core markets in 2025, while confidence in the brand was higher than the average for the market as a whole, matching the level usually seen for the premium brands. Audi and Porsche continue to occupy top positions in the image ranking.
E-mobility and Digitalization in Group Sales
As part of our electrification campaign, we aim to gradually expand our offer of completely battery-electric vehicles. This campaign will be complemented by vehicle-related, customer-focused offerings, such as customized charging infrastructure solutions and mobile online services. The Volkswagen Group is thus transforming from an automotive manufacturer into a mobility service provider, which poses new challenges for Sales.
Digitalization provides opportunities for Sales, including improved customer contact. Our actions are based on extensive cooperation between the brands and markets to achieve the greatest possible synergies. We aim to create an optimal product experience for the customers of our brands – one which impresses with a seamless communication process, from the initial interest in purchasing a vehicle to servicing and ultimately to the sale of the used car. In doing so, we are opening up new business models relating to the connected vehicle – in particular with regard to mobility and other services.
Fleet Customer Business
Business relationships with fleet customers are often long-term partnerships. In a volatile environment, this customer group provides greater stability for sales of well-equipped, profitable vehicle models than the private customer segment.
The Volkswagen Group has an established base of business fleet customers, especially in Germany and the rest of Europe. Our extensive product range enables us to satisfy their individual mobility needs from a single source. In an increasingly competitive environment, we secured around 1,000 new fleet customers in Germany in 2025 alone, which meant that together with a dedicated dealer organization we sent out a clear signal of trust and sustainable growth.
In an overall passenger car market in Germany that grew by 1.4% in the reporting year, business fleet customers accounted for 18.0 (19.9)% of total registrations. The Volkswagen Group’s share of this customer segment increased to 49.8 (48.0)%. Outside Germany, the Group’s share of registrations by fleet customers in Europe was 28.4 (27.6)%. This shows that fleet customers’ confidence in the Group remains at a high level. We were able to consolidate our strong market position in the fleet customer business in Europe.
After Sales and Service
In the after-sales business, we regard ourselves as a complete provider of all products and services relevant to customers. Together with our partners, our mission is to ensure lifelong mobility for our customers and vehicles. We are therefore continuously expanding our portfolio of tailor-made offers and services throughout the life cycle with the aim of improving customer experience and increasing the satisfaction of our customers. The partner businesses also offer a comprehensive portfolio of services in all vehicle classes.
In After Sales, we are supporting the changing world of mobility and our systematic focus on e-mobility by developing new services and innovative concepts. We are working towards the transformation with a range of partners specialized in the respective markets. With the resulting connectivity services, we will also be able to generate synergies in After Sales across the Volkswagen Group’s brands and take advantage of new opportunities to boost customer loyalty.
In addition to individual service, the timely provision of genuine parts is essential to assure passenger car customer satisfaction in After Sales. The genuine parts supplied by our passenger car brands and the expertise of the service centers stand for the quality, safety and value retention of our customers’ vehicles. With our global After Sales network, we are creating the prerequisites to supply almost all our authorized service facilities around the world, generally within 24 hours.
In the Digital After Sales project, we are modernizing processes and IT systems in After Sales. By adopting an approach that focuses product and service development on the individual needs of both dealers and customers, we aim to reduce the time needed for administrative tasks at the dealers through AI-based, interrelated services and also to stabilize existing IT systems and boost efficiency. In addition, innovative digital after-sales services are intended to improve the customer experience.
Around the world, our commercial vehicles business also prides itself on the quality of its products and on customer focus. Our range of trucks, buses and engines is complemented by services that aim to guarantee fuel efficiency, reliability and the ready availability of vehicles. By offering vehicles equipped with an all-electric or hybrid drivetrain, we take into consideration both customers’ wishes and our responsibility to contribute to emission-free transportation. Workshop service and service contracts are intended to offer customers a high degree of quality as well as a high level of safety. We are reducing maintenance times and costs with a view to the vehicles’ total operating costs.