Published on April 9th, 2012 | by Steven Hodson
0Hybrid Buyers Appear To Be One-Time Buyers Suggests Study
Well this isn’t something that environmentalists or car manufacturers will want to hear but it seems, according to a new Polk study that people who buy hybrid cars generally won’t buy another one.
Using data from car purchases made in 2011 the company found that only 35 percent of the people who bought a hybrid car previously would buy one again. Of the hybrid car manufacturer who scored the best with consumers to the point that they would buy another one was Toyota.
Of those who bought hybrids Toyota, and the Toyota Prius, ranked at the top with sixty percent of the Toyota hybrid buyers said they would buy another Toyota car, even if it wasn’t a hybrid.
According to Polk, forty-one percent of Toyota hybrid drivers choose to buy another hybrid (from any brand). Interestingly, when Polk took out these Toyota buyers from their results, hybrid loyalty rates dropped to “under 25 percent. However, in our book that’s kind of skewing the numbers, since most hybrids sold in the U.S. are built by Toyota. When looking only at Honda hybrid drivers, for example, 52 percent bought another Honda and “just under 20 percent” purchased another hybrid (from any brand). The in-brand loyalty, says Brad Smith, director of Polk’s Loyalty Management Practice, shows that hybrids “can certainly give a brand a competitive edge when it comes to attracting new customers.”
via Autoblog
Interestingly enough gas prices had very little impact on the “hybrid segment loyalty”