New vehicle purchasers are sticking to their brand loyalty, finds a new J.D. Power study.
The analytics firm scored company loyalty—the percentage of new car buyers who return to the same brand when trading in their current vehicle—from September 2021 through August 2022.
J.D. Power also broke its loyalty study into five segment categories—premium car, premium SUV, mass market car, mass market SUV and truck—for the first time. Its results showed foreign brands had the highest brand loyalty within these segments.
Toyota ranked first in mass market car and SUV brands, with a 62.2% and 63.6% return rate, respectively. Subaru finished second in the SUV segment, and 62.6% while Kia came in second in the mass market car segment, at 54.1%.
Among premium car brands, Porsche took the top spot at 57.4% brand loyalty for premium cars, while BMW took the premium spot for SUVs at 58.6%.
Ford is the only domestic automaker to take a segment. The automaker posted the highest loyalty among truck brands at 63.8%.
Loyalty overall also saw an uptick, with Toyota seeing a 1.1% increase from its mass market rating in 2021 for the mass market car segment. Its SUV segment jumped 2.5 percentage points, from 2021's mass market average.
Subaru loyalty is also rising. In the SUV segment, the brand's rate rose by 0.8 percentage points.
Premium brands saw the biggest climb on average. Porsche brand loyalty saw a 7.2 percentage point uptick, while BMW saw an even 13 percentage point increase.
Ford jumped 9.9 percentage points from its previous rating.
J.D. Power attributed many of these upticks to the new-vehicle shortage.
"Tight supply chain and lower-than-normal production could have disrupted loyalty, but the highest-ranking brands excelled by staying focused on keeping owners in the brand," Tyson Jominy, vice president of data & analytics at J.D. Power, said in the statement.
Jominy reported the shortage is just one of many disruptions on the horizon. Electric vehicles may disrupt brand loyalty in the future.
"There is an element of risk to brand loyalty that could erode for those sitting on the sidelines or not moving quickly enough," Jominy said.
