Polk Customer Loyalty Awards 2007: GM Vs. Toyota, Round Two
On one hand, Polk Automotive's 2007 Loyalty Awards are "based on actual consumer transactions, with over 6 million household records per year being analyzed to determine the winners." On the other hand, I never trust a list of award winners that doesn't provide the full results, including the losers. So, GM wins the manufacturer loyalty category, with a staggering 62.89 percent customer retention rate. Take THAT Toyota! Uh, hang-on. ToMoCo wins the "make" loyalty category, with 56.69 percent customer retention. What's the diff? (We'll phone Polk later.) GM scoops six segment titles: Small Car (Saturn Ion, 23.5 percent), Large Car (Chevrolet Impala, 33.89 percent), Sports Car (Pontiac Solstice, 19.08 percent), Full-Size Pickup Truck (Chevrolet Silverado, 36.64 percent), Full-Size SUV (Chevrolet Suburban, 23.21 percent), and Prestige SUV (Cadillac Escalade, 33.61 percent). Toyota takes five segment titles: Mid-size Car (Toyota Prius, 33.34 percent), Luxury Car (Lexus ES, 32.8 percent), Prestige Luxury Car (Lexus LS, 44.41 percent), Compact Pickup Truck (Toyota Tacoma, 17.73 percent), and Midsize SUV (Lexus RX, 29.04 percent). There's something strange about all this. Did I mention that we're phoning Polk?
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Robert Farago: "Did I mention that we're phoning Polk?" Will that be the podcast? Might be a good one.
Strange indeed. These results fly right into the face of other loyalty surveys out there, notably JD Power's loyalty/customer retention survey. In other surveys including JD Power's, Toyota is the clear leader when it comes to customer loyalty and customer retention. I too would like to see a detailed explanation from Polk, as to how they got their results, how many people and what kind of people (demographics) were surveyed, and who the losers were.
It would be more intuitive and meaningful if they released the figures for every vehicle from top to bottom.
owning both a 1991 4x4 toyota pick up and a 2005 toyota tacoma i can say toyota has retained me as a compact truck buyer. and my ex-girlfriends car was a ion that i drove every now and then so i can give feed back on that car. i think the head designer of the ion must have owned a '91 toyota 4x4 because both the truck and the car handled exactly the same. not only that but the ion's interior looked like it was made out of the exact same (very tought, but very cheap) hard plastics. they even both had the same amount of rattles, however my truck spent more time off road in the desert then it did on the street, so it lived a much harder life. the ion was such a bad car that any day of the week i would take a 15+ year old toyota truck over a brand new ion, hands down.