Are you loyal to your car? If you needed a new one, would you buy the same model or brand? 

 

About 50% of the customers in market for cars are brand loyal ie.. they buy the same brand of car that they already have. 

 

As for the rest of (fickle) folks, they put tremendous pressure on the car manufacturers to keep working hard to earn their purchases. 

 

Surprisingly, according to automotive research firm R.L. Polk, General Motors – which is accused of not building cars people want – nearly two out of three GM owners, who needed a new vehicle, bought another GM vehicle last year. And GM’s biggest brand, Chevrolet won 4 model loyalty awards for their vehicle categories.

 

“We’re looking across 9.5 million retail purchases last year. And taking a look to see how many of those people had owned cars formerly and had come back to market. And really tracking to see if their loyalty was to stay with a manufacturer within a brand, with a specific model – or whether, in fact, they were defectors. What we found is that General Motors won the overall manufacturers loyalty award.”  Polk said. 

 

Going forward, Polk suggests, if carmakers want to maintain their owner’s loyalty, they need to focus on three things. Keep the quality of the vehicles high. Create excitement around the brands and models. And most importantly, keep rolling out the technology – especially, fuel-saving, green technologies like hybrids and electric vehicles.

 

Attribution : Image used in this article is courtesy of Lance and Erin
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/lance_mountain/94989565/)