SOUTHFIELD, Mich. -

Ford remains on top of the industry when it comes to brand loyalty rates, but it's two luxury makes that are showing the most improvement in retaining their respective ownership bases.

That’s the latest from Polk, which released its first-quarter brand loyalty report on Wednesday, finding that Porsche (up 9.5 percentage points) and Cadillac (up 8.3 percentage points) showed the greatest year-over-year gains in loyalty rates during Q1.

Mazda was in third, with a 7.8-percentage-point improvement. These were just three of the 13 brands whose gains were stronger than the overall industry’s improvement level.

“In each case, strong-selling models fuel the loyalty to these brands,” Lonnie Miller, vice president of Polk's Loyalty Management practice, said of these three makes.  “We saw a majority of the contribution for brand loyalty coming from Cayenne owners for Porsche, CTS owners for Cadillac and Mazda3 owners for Mazda.

“There's something to be said for paying positive attention to the majority of your customer base while treating buyers professionally and continuing to meet or exceed their vehicle needs.”

Overall loyalty for the industry was at 51.5 percent, which is 2.6-percentage-point improvement from the first quarter of 2012.  

Ford topped the market with 65.1 percent loyalty (up 3.3 percentage points), “proving that its impressive lineup is making a significant impact among automotive shoppers who are returning to market,” Polk stated.

Polk’s analysis is based on household loyalty among brands with at least 1,000 customers returning to market, the firm said. The analysis compared the brand first-quarter 2013 performances to their respective first-quarter 2012 performances.

A look at the leaders in brand loyalty improvements, as provided by Polk, is below:


 

Note: Based on Polk's household loyalty among brands with at least 1,000 customers
returning to market.