Car Shopping Insights: Loyalty to Dealership

You've heard that brand loyalty is fading among auto shoppers. But what about loyalty to dealership? When it comes to buying a car, are older car buyers or younger buyers more loyal to their dealer? Are women or men more loyal? Does media preference affect loyalty? Mudd Advertising set out to answer these questions in a recent study on auto buyer loyalty to dealership and discovered interesting insights into the behavior of automotive shoppers. Customer data, compiled from car buyers of varying ages, gender, geographic location, and media consumption, aimed to measure the impact of these factors on customer loyalty in the automotive industry. After studying dealership customer media surveys since 2006 and reviewing more than 73,300 media usage surveys, Mudd Advertising concluded that differences in age, gender and media usage do not significantly affect loyalty.

IMPORTANT FINDINGS:

Loyalty factor by age:

Regardless of age group, our findings show that vehicle price and interaction with the salesperson had the most influence on the purchase regardless of age group. Additionally, as buyers age, salesperson influence, location, future service, and availability only increase in importance.

Loyalty by gender:

The findings show no significant difference in media usage between genders. Both male and female respondents listen to radio news and watch TV news at equal rates, and showed a preference to these channels over trade papers by 90%. The findings also show little difference in the use of smart phones between genders.

Loyalty by media usage:

Regardless of preferred media, the data collected from this study shows little difference in loyalty across radio, tv news, trade paper, and smart phone. However, non-radio users report marginally higher loyalty than radio users.