Car Buyers' Brand Loyalties Shrink

Washington DC October 17, 2011; The AIADA newsletter reported that consumers have shown a recent willingness to cross-shop outside their traditional habits, according to Automotive News.

Prodded and lured in one direction by such factors as inventory shortages at import leaders Toyota and Honda, and shooed in the opposite direction by disappearing brands such as Pontiac, Saturn, and Mercury, some consumers find themselves unanchored.

The billion-dollar question: Are they changing shopping patterns out of temporary inconvenience, or is a new attitude emerging in the consumer standoff between import and domestic brands?

Compete Inc., an automotive market research firm, finds that the tendency of Japanese-brand shoppers to cross-shop Chevrolet, Ford, and Dodge has trended steadily upward since the first quarter of 2010.

Similarly, J.D. Power and Associates reports that the percentage of auto shoppers who traded in an Asian import-brand vehicle and bought another one from that manufacturer has declined slightly. Although some argue the changes mean customers are moving toward domestic brands, Toyota spokesman Joe Tetherow contends that "A lot of this change in numbers has to do simply with the inventory problems we've dealt with this year," referring to the global Japanese production crash caused by the earthquake. "Our customers [tend] to be pretty loyal.”