Thanks to the current state of the economy and plummeting sales in the automotive market, it’s no secret that the luxury car market has nearly come to a screeching halt of late. When you include Mercedes Benz, BMW and Lexus in that list - all reporting huge losses in September and October - we’ve got ourselves one severe crisis in the automotive industry. 

Auto manufacturers who have been stung by the Dow and the credit crunch, are now having to re-tool some of the old rules and ways of automotive marketing. In a climate where competition is king and advertising budgets are under pressure, auto makers are now targeting customers who have not yet decided whether to stay or stray from the luxury brand they currently own and drive.

According to Alyson Connor, vice president of behavioral planning and analytics at MicroMass Communications, a North Carolina agency that applies behavioral science to relationship marketing, she says keeping customer loyalty – especially these days – is a top priority for most automobile manufacturers:

“In a declining market, retaining customers is more efficient, more intimate and more cost-effective than any effort to lure new buyers.  Loyalty is the name of the game. Every point increase in loyalty is worth millions in revenue for the high-end manufacturer.”

In order to help companies compete in the loyalty battleground, MicroMass has designed a method which is able to identify current car owners as being one of three types of vehicle owners - the defectors, the loyalists or those that are undecided. This scientific approach is said to also be able to determine which messages are most likely to motivate specific customers to increase and keep brand loyalty.

Connor says that luxury car owners have traditionally formed attachments with their cars and compares these attachments to marriage and dating, saying there’s a real correlation between personal relationships and car ownership and because of this, MicroMass was able to utilize insights from human relationships and further apply them to the luxury auto market. MicroMass results then showed it was possible to actually predict which customers were likely to remain loyal to a brand, which were most likely to defect, and which were undecided.

Cameron McNaughton, of TreeFarm Partners, a marketing consultant firm which advises companies in the luxury automotive industry and who partnered with MicroMass to develop the concept, agrees:

“Throwing marketing dollars at those who’ve already made up their minds is a waste, especially when most are tightening their belts.”

According to further research by the agency, the undecided group is quite a diverse bunch and MicroMass was able to identify five behavioral segments among luxury car buyers, who responded to a different combination of motivators. These segments ranged from the “Status Seeker” – one who sees the car as an emblem of success, to those who tend to ignore the opinions of others and focus instead on quality, safety and customer service - or otherwise known as the “Confident Pragmatist.”

Says Conner:

“These two are polar opposites. Along with the other segments, they respond to different motivators and reflect different ownership experiences. For marketing messages to succeed, they must be tailored to the individual motivators of behavior. If you are delivering a message that fits one of these segments, then you are bound to turn off customers in another segment. In other words, there’s no such thing as one size fits all.”

“The key is to go deeper than demographics and psychographics and get to the core of the individual buyer. Behavioral science tells us that if you know a customer’s mindset, then you will know what motivates that person to act. In this case, the car manufacturer can learn which buttons to push in order to generate brand loyalty.”

Are you loyal?  Which auto manufacturer is your favorite?  Which do you trust most and why?  Which has made you a happy or return customer?  Which to do favor least? Leave a comment below to share your thoughts.

Tags: Car Shopping, General //