Yeah, I’d buy another one
Brand loyalty, we are told, is dead: we’re too sophisticated and/or too jaded to bother with such an outmoded concept today.
Ford Motor Co. vehicles accounted for six of the top 10 vehicles for customer brand loyalty, according to recent industry analyses from Experian Automotive.
Ford Fusion, Ford Edge and Ford Five-Hundred owners showed the industry’s highest brand loyalty, returning to buy a Ford Motor Co. vehicle 62.4 percent, 57.9 percent and 56 percent of the time, respectively. The Ford Freestyle (51.9 percent) was fifth, the Ford Escape (49.4 percent) was seventh, and the Ford Focus (47.57 percent) came in ninth.
“Ford had an outstanding performance for brand loyalty in the second quarter of 2009,” said Jeff Anderson, director of Consulting and Analytics for Experian Automotive. “With six of the top 10 vehicles for customer brand loyalty, Ford is showing that its products are passing the most important test: turning happy customers into repeat buyers.” Other top-finishing vehicles included the Toyota Prius (52 percent) in fourth place, the Chevrolet Impala (51.7 percent) in sixth place, the Toyota Camry (47.8 percent) at number eight and the Toyota Corolla (47.56 percent) in 10th place.
What’s amusing about this, at least to me, is that you can’t buy a new Freestyle or Five Hundred anymore: both these cars were retrofitted with Taurus badging, and the Taurus X, which had been the Freestyle, is now entirely out of style, Ford having finally figured out that they were trying to sell three different crossovers in the same size class with the same farging powertrain. Now they’re down to two.
Aside: My ex drives a Five Hundred, and she’d be irate to think she spent that kind of money for a mere Taurus. This from a woman who used to drive a Mercury Grand Marquis de Sade, fercryingoutloud.
Still, you have to figure that some of these folks are buying not just the brand but the model: Prius drivers aren’t going to trade up, if “up” it be, to an Avalon. And if everyone knows someone who loves a Honda, apparently it’s just the one.
Charles Pergiel »
19 October 2009 · 1:49 am
People do love their cars, but people being people, I suspect the salesman has more to do with the sale than the car. If people have a good experience buying a car from someone (yeah, I know, hard to believe), they are likely to go back to that person when they buy their next car. I know when we were shopping for a car we ran into a very nice guy at the Ford dealer. We still ended up buying the Mitsubishi, and from the worst kind of saleman, but we wanted to sit up high, and the Mitsubishi was taller than any of the crossover Fords.