The majority of new car buyers are returning to the brands they know best. That’s the finding from J.D. Power 2022 Automotive Brand Loyalty Study. The organization notes that inventory shortages and difficulties finding new cars have kept buyers loyal to the automakers they already know, driven by an intense focus on customer retention by top brands.
Tyson Jominy, J.D. Power’s vice president of data and analytics, said that “the issue of tight supply chain and lower-than-normal production could have been quite disruptive to loyalty, but the highest-ranking brands excelled by staying focused on keeping owners in the brand.” He also said that automakers with the most loyal customers tend to keep new products coming and focus on improving the value retention of existing models. Looking at the rankings, Jominy’s assessment seems spot-on.
- Porsche took the top spot for premium car brands with a 57.4 percent loyalty score, and the brand’s customers tend to return year after year to get the latest 911 or, now, the new Taycan EV.
- Genesis came in second among premium car brands with 54.6 percent loyalty.
- BMW and Lexus topped the luxury SUV rankings, with 58.6 and 56.4 percent loyalty ratings, respectively.
- Toyota came out on top among both mass-market cars (Kia was runner-up) and mass-market SUVs (Subaru was second).
- And Ford topped the trucks segment, with Toyota second.
This is the fourth year for J.D. Power’s Automotive Brand Loyalty Study. The organization uses data from only new-vehicle franchised dealers, and it rates loyalty based on the number of buyers trading in an existing same-brand vehicle at the time of purchase. J.D. Power redesigned the study in 2022 with new categories for premium cars, premium SUVs, mass-market cars, mass-market SUVs, and trucks.
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