A recent study from JD Power that measures loyalty amongst luxury car buyers in USA places Lexus at the very top of the chart. It's practically very difficult for luxury marques to retain their customers as many thou were aftering the prestige of the brand, specs and services played a very important role in retaining the feel good factor, that helps generates returning customers. The study was done calculating the ratio of cars being traded in for new models of each specific brand, should the traded in car was of the same brand, it is then being calculated as a 'returning customer' hence loyalty. The top three as expected, Lexus, BMW and Mercedes whereas Saab performed the worst, surprising was Hummer, the dying brand of GM still scored pretty well.
However, the ratio of loyalty doesn't reflect the well being of the brand, say for example a brand that does particularly good in 2008, raking up plenty of new customers and customers from other brands, would also score very low in this survey, given the huge increase of trade in vehicles of other makes.
Results are as:
Lexus 48.0%
BMW 44.0%
Mercedes-Benz 41.2%
Cadillac 37.3%
Porsche 36.9%
Acura 29.3%
Lincoln 28.2%
Audi 22.7%
Infiniti 20.7%
Volvo 20.0%
HUMMER 16.8%
Land Rover 15.6%
Jaguar 14.2%
Saab 8.8%
