Study Confirms That What Toyota, Ford, and Porsche Have in Common Gives Each of These Brands a Serious Edge
Brand loyalty used to be a much bigger deal in the car world. Over the years, the increase in new car companies and the inventory shortage drove buyers into a much more open mindset for buying. However, now that inventory levels are starting to creep in the direction of where they were pre-pandemic, consumers are flirting with loyalty again. According to a study by J.D. Power, Ford, Toyota, and Porsche lead the market as the car companies with the best brand loyalty.
What truck company has the most loyal customers?
The J.D. Power study looked at three segments to gauge brand loyalty: premium, mass-market, and pickup trucks. As you might have guessed, Ford took the crown for the truck brand with the most loyal customers. The F-series trucks are the most powerful entity in the car world. There seems to be no record that this series of pickup trucks doesn’t dominate when it comes to sales.
Ford, like last year, earned the top spot for the most loyal customers in the truck world with a 64.6 percent loyalty rate. This is undoubtedly due to the F-Series and all its many configurations and options. However, Ford also has the Maverick and Ranger, both very popular trucks that aren’t a part of the F team. These trucks account for some serious numbers.
What premium car company has the most loyal customers?
Porsche takes home the W with a 56.6% loyalty rate, just beating out BMW and Mercedes-Benz, which earned 56.1% and 50.5%, respectively. Although Porsche won out overall, Volvo deserves an honorable mention for its luxury SUV brand loyalty rate of 56.5%.
People clearly love their Porsches. If their hats, lapel pins, jackets, key chains, socks, monogrammed driving gloves, writing pens, and license tags didn’t tell us enough already, their customer retention rate will. Porsche makes a fine product, and the people who can afford it clearly agree.
What is the most loyal customer base of any brand?
Which other brand would earn the top spot for mass-market loyalty other than Toyota? Toyota has earned a massive, die-hard fan base that is not only passionate about Toyota products but often will loyally only pilot Toyota vehicles. It is as good a choice as any and better than most for a company to remain loyal to. Toyota’s reliability has been proven to the point of making it damn near cliche.
Toyota maintains the belt with a 60% loyalty rating. Honda and Kia follow closely behind Toyota, with Subaru maintaining the belt for general SUV loyalty.
Loyalty is hard to come by and easy to lose
“As vehicle availability increased and more choices hit the market for consumers, loyalty among brands as a whole saw a decline this year. Additionally, owners were tied down to their vehicles for longer than normal due to ongoing supply chain disruptions, and as a result, were more likely to experience problems with their vehicles,” explains Tyson Jominy, VP of data and analytics at J.D. Power.
This J.D. Power study is fascinating because it shows that there are other factors at play than just brand loyalty in the car market. A major economic shift with COVID-19 and then the semiconductor chip shortage throttled supply as demand boomed. This forced long-time fans of certain brands to extend into new dealer lots. Whoever had the cars was the one selling cars. It was that simple. Now, as supply builds back up, loyalty is back on the table.
It will be interesting to see how consumers spend money on certain car brands as EVs cut into more of the market share.
