According to new research by the Motoring.co.uk website, once a car is out of warranty, just 23% of motorists use the dealer that sold them the car for servicing.

18% opt to use an independent dealer and 23% use a local franchised dealer.

To demonstrate how manufacturers can help their dealers with retention, the company points to recent aftersales campaigns for Seat, Volvo and Vauxhall.

Chris Green, sales director at Motoring, commented: “It is vital that dealers communicate to customers that their cars are worked on by trained mechanics and that they will always use the correct franchised parts, where some of the high street independents will not.

“Stats from our email suite show that if manufacturers target consumers with strong servicing offers, we can produce over 5% click through onto the servicing landing pages of manufacturer websites.

“If you compare this to say display campaigns, which only average around 0.6% click through rate, then it is much better value for money.”