Brand loyalty is finicky as minor changes can have major repercussions. A modern example would be Bud Light, but today we’re focusing on a new study from CarMax, which examined purchases with trade-ins made last year.
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Overall, the study found that 19% of customers bought the same brand as their trade-in. This isn’t too surprising as the company noted it’s basically the same result as their first study on brand loyalty in 2017.
However, a lot has changed in the past few years and the loyalty rankings are notably different. Toyota moved from 5th to 1st place as a whopping 28.5% of CarMax customers with a Toyota trade-in bought another Toyota.
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The mainstream brand was followed by Mercedes and Lexus. CarMax noted this echoes earlier results as “in both 2017 and 2023, luxury brands account for more than half of the top ten makes on the list of brands with the highest customer loyalty.”
Putting premium brands aside, Ram went from a no-show to 4th place. Tesla also charted for the first time, coming in 5th, as CarMax didn’t begin selling their vehicles until 2018.
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At the other end of the spectrum, Chrysler, Dodge, and Kia had some of the least loyal customers. There’s no word on why these three ended up at the bottom, but Kia could have been impacted by a rash of social media-fueled thefts.
On a model-specific level, the Toyota Prius won top honors as 38.1% of customers bought another Prius. Second-place is a big surprise as it’s the Mercedes ML 350, which has since been replaced by the GLE. The Ford F-250 followed closely behind, with a 34.7% loyalty rate, and the Lexus RX and ES round out the top five spots. While the Chevrolet Corvette previously won in 2017, it didn’t even chart this time around.
One of the least surprising developments was increased loyalty to crossovers and SUVs. 71.1% of owners bought another one and that’s up from 61% six years ago.
Bodystyle loyalty wasn’t much of a contest as four-door pickups had a loyalty rate of 45.9%, while four-door sedans came in at 35.3%. The latter number is a bit surprising as sedan customers were more loyal than those trading-in minivans, coupes, and convertibles.
