Chevrolet Has Highest Brand Loyalty Among Car Shoppers

Historically popular and highly rated Asian brands fare poorly in CarGurus brand loyalty study, with Honda placing second to last.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Aug. 25, 2010 -- CarGurus (https://www.cargurus.com/), a leading online automotive community, today announced the results of its online car shopping brand loyalty study. As part of this study, 1.7 million car searches were analyzed for consumers using CarGurus’ DealFinder online car shopping service. The consumer’s initial search was then compared to any subsequent searches for other cars to gauge the consumer’s propensity to consider brands other than their initial brand of choice.

Of people who searched for a Chevrolet vehicle, 70% would not consider any other brand during their car shopping experience. Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen shoppers showed equally brand loyal behavior with 69% and 67% of consumers respectively not considering any other brand. At the low end of brand loyalty, more than half of those who searched for Land Rover and Honda vehicles searched for cars from other brands. Surprisingly, none of the historically top-selling Asian brands like Toyota, Nissan, or Honda were in the top five manufacturers for brand loyalty.

Reasons for Loyalty

Chevrolet took top honors for brand loyalty due to Chevrolet's large car lineup that includes the Corvette and the Camaro, two hot recent models with long, storied histories and incredibly loyal cult followings, as well as a number of sought-after retired models likely generating very focused interest from used car buyers, including the Monza, Biscayne, and El Camino.

German cars are recognized for their refinement and performance, so Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen achieving high brand loyalty scores shouldn't be surprising. Within Mercedes-Benz's lineup, its C-Class and SL-Class vehicles had particularly high loyalty, while Volkswagen's Eos and Jetta scored well, and its numbers were boosted by distinctive used cars like the Microbus and the Cabriolet.

Land Rover's lineup consistently had low loyalty, with its Discovery Series II, LR4, and Range Rover performing particularly poorly. Search volumes make it clear that shoppers considering Hondas, particularly the Civic and Accord, do lots of comparison shopping, which hurt the company's brand loyalty numbers in this study.

CarGurus Car Shopping Brand Loyalty Study - Methodology

For this study, CarGurus analyzed more than 1.7 million car searches performed on CarGurus’ DealFinder car shopping service site during the 90 days ended June 30, 2010. CarGurus received over 3.1 Million unique visitors a month in June 2010, making it one of the top 25 most popular online automotive sites in the world.

About CarGurus LLC

Located in Harvard Square, Cambridge MA, CarGurus LLC is an online automotive community founded by Langley Steinert, formerly Chairman and co-founder TripAdvisor LLC. CarGurus' founders, board, and investors bring a wealth of experience from such leading web companies as TripAdvisor, eBay, Expedia, and Yahoo. For more information about CarGurus visit us at www.cargurus.com.