Toyota has topped YouGov’s 2021 Automotive Rankings for Australia with an Index score of +43.9, making it the car brand with the best overall brand health according to Australians.
The news of Toyota’s win follows the brand’s ongoing media pitch in Australia that began way back in January of last year. At last count, B&T believes there are three agencies still in the running to win the $100 million a year business. They include incumbent The Media Store, Publicis’ Spark Foundry and GroupM’s MediaCom. Dentsu claim dentsuX is also a chance, however, that is not B&T’s understanding.
YouGov’s rankings are compiled using its BrandIndex Index score, a measure of overall brand health calculated by taking the average of impression, quality, value, satisfaction, recommend and reputation scores. The rankings are measured from 1 February 2020 to 31 January 2021.
Toyota topped the charts in every metric, particularly for value (which measures which brand consumers see to be of most value-for-money), with a score of +44.1 – with the next closest brand being Mazda with a score of +28.0. Toyota also smokes the rest of the competition when it comes to their recommend score (+45.2), followed by mazda trailing 17.2 points with a score of (+28.0).
Half of the top 10 brands are Japanese, and they make up the top three the list. In second place is Mazda (+27.5), which also comes in second for not only for value and recommend but also for general impression (+35.7), satisfaction (+14.2). Honda rounds up the top three (+23.7).
German brands Mercedes-Benz (+23.0) and BMW (+22.5) take fourth and fifth respectively. While Mercedes-Benz comes is fourth place overall, it takes second for quality (+41.7) and reputation (+36.5) (which measures the corporate reputation of a brand by asking which brands consumers would be proud of working for). BMW follows Mercedes-Benz, coming in third overall for Reputation (+35.0) and Quality (+40.4).
In sixth place is the only South Korean brand to make the list is Hyundai (+19.7), followed by German brand Audi in seventh (+17.2).
Japanese brands Nissan (+17.2) is in eighth and Subaru (+16.6) in ninth. The list is wrapped up with American brand Ford in 10th (+16.3). While Ford comes in 10th, it stands out with its satisfaction score – coming in third (12.3) on that metric, indicating that Ford customers are more likely to be satisfied with their vehicles.
