Mediapost -- In the world of in-car entertainment and connectivity, a buck’s worth of research and education is worth $100 of advertising. You can talk about your app suites forever, but if people don't know what you’re talking about, and if you yourself don't know which technology the people actually use (and why), you may be spending money to talk to a wall. 

It isn't an engineering and design talking point, either. Connected-car technology is climbing the feature consideration ladder, and when consumers use infotainment features, they are more loyal to the car brand. 

Automotive market research firm SBD and Nielsen delve into this in a new white paper based on data mined from Nielsen's AutoTechCast survey, which polled some 14,000 U.S. car buyers. One of the things the firms say right off the bat is that more and more people are specifically looking at how they can stay connected, and that is becoming the basis of their car choice. And while it sounds like a small piece of the buyer pie, 14% of respondents who said they would now place in-car telematics within their top three shopping criteria is a lot of people. Especially since a few years ago a connected car was one that had just hit another car in the rear. 

The study offers this idea of the virtuous cycle: “familiarity, interest, usage, satisfaction and loyalty.” Loyalty is driven by satisfaction; satisfaction by actual usage; which, of course, is spurred by interest in using the technology; which depends on how familiar a consumer is with it. One argument the firms make is that a marketer who only listens to what consumers say they want is doing negative reinforcement because they are making assumptions about what consumers are familiar with. They are going with what they know.