12/21/2010

Stunner: Consumers “Avoid” Toyota in Droves (via brandchannel)

Stunner: Consumers “Avoid” Toyota in DrovesDale Buss on December 20, 2010 01:00 PMlast kick in the back as they attempt to close down their SoCal offices for holiday parties: the new J.D. Power and Associates brand “Avoider” study.annual report by the highly reputable automotive market-research firm found that 19% of new-vehicle shoppers surveyed said they avoided Toyota because of the “bad reputation of the manufacture” — a whopping increase of 17% from a year ago., , , , , , , , , , , ,

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Clearly, 2010 can’t end quickly enough for the stewards of the Toyota brand in the United States. One
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Most of that unfortunate rise stems directly from Toyota’s problems managing the market fallout from its safety recalls beginning early in the year, and indicates Toyota's PR damage control and "trust us" spots such as the one above have failed to win back consumers' trust.
Interestingly, 15% of those Americans surveyed by Power also expressed concern “about the future of this vehicle brand,” which is a definite negative for Toyota as it plots its comeback in the U.S.
And a bit weirdly, 15% of respondents also cited a “bad experience with this manufacturer,” up a huge 12 percentage points from 2009.
It’s hard to see how the millions of Americans represented by that last number could possibly have had, personally, a “bad experience” with Toyota this year — especially as the brand and it dealers were making nice with consumers with all those record incentives, conscious of the hit that they were taking from the safety problems. Only a relatively few Americans actually reported safety incidents stemming from Toyota’s brake difficulties.
The auto brands that scored best in the survey included Ford, Hyundai, Kia, GMC, and Ram. Those that picked up the biggest boosts in support included Audi, Scion and Smart.
J.D. Power didn’t share its brand-by-brand findings in great detail with the public, presumably because it sells exhaustive research reports from the Avoider Study to its automotive clients.
Most curious about Toyota’s showing — and perhaps most unsettling to brand managers — is that Toyota’s Avoider numbers jumped significantly even though the main reason behind it, reputation, was the least important among the five major factors cited by respondents for avoiding a model, which were led by exterior styling.
There was one bright note in the study for Toyota: People who never had a first-hand experience with Toyota were more likely to have a poor idea of the company. Existing or former customers, it seems, are hanging in there.
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