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What happens when motorcycle or UTV customers visit a dealer website and inquire about a vehicle? How does the dealership respond to the customer, and which brands have the best responses?

That's exactly what Pied Piper Management Company, a retail performance evaluator, set out to find when they sent "mystery shoppers" to inquire about vehicles for sale at 6,407 powersports dealerships across the United States. Their Internet Lead Effectiveness (ILE) Motorcycle/UTV Industry Study has been conducted since 2011.

In each case, Pied Piper's mystery shoppers provided a customer name, e-mail address, and phone number, then waited for a response. Dealership responses were scored on a scale from 0-100 across a range of criteria. And the results?

Harley-Davidson dealerships had the best response rate for 2021. Indian wasn't far behind in second place, trailed by BMW and Polaris, with all four hovering around the 50 percent response mark. (While Polaris is the parent company of Indian, most dealers either focus on Polaris off-road products or Indian motorcycles.) Not only did Harley-Davidson, Indian, BMW, and Polaris lead in response quality, but they even replied within an hour 30 percent of the time. E-mails and texts were far more common than calls.