Hyundai, Kia Car Brands climbing upwards
Hyundai is the Top Upward-climbing Car Brand, says Kelley Blue Book!
On June 28th, Kelley Blue Book announced the results of its latest market intelligence analysis that identified the top 5 upward-climbing and downward-declining car brands in the area of market share for May 2010, as compared to their performance a year earlier in May 2009.
Kelley Blue Book is the automobile industry’s leading provider of new and used cars information. Based on this well-known websites latest analysis, Hyundai and Ford have significantly increased their shares in market interest, while on the other hand, the usually leading Japanese car brands, Toyota and Honda, showed a significant plunge in their share of market interest.
The Hyundai actually is the top upward-climbing car brand. The other names are Ford (second), GMC (third), Kia (Hyundai‘s sister company is fourth), and Subaru (fifth).
Meanwhile, the top five downward decliners are Toyota (first), Honda (second), Pontiac (third), Dodge (fourth), and Lexus (fifth).
Hyundai’s amazing market share increase was at a high 70 percent from May 2009 to May 2010. This means more new-car shoppers than usual chose to buy a Hyundai. With this increase, the Korean brand now holds 6 percent of the total new-car shopping activity from only 4.6 percent in January 2010.
Hyundai’s steadily growing market success is largely because of the fast-rising popularity of the re-designed and updated 2011 Hyundai Sonata sedan and Tucson crossover vehicles. Since the beginning of the year, the two models have received strong marketing support. It was quite clear that more people have become very interested with them.
On the other hand, Ford has accounted for 10% of all new-car shopper activities on kbb.com. It has received favorable increase in market share primarily due to the fact that more people have been drawn towards Ford’s Super Duty trucks and the ever-popular Mustang.
Recently, Ford has come up with a very successful ad campaign of the all-new 2011 Mustang and its fuel efficiency features. According to kbb.com, the all-new Ford Fiesta subcompact has also gained an increase in popularity among new-car shoppers.
The third in the list is Kia, which enjoyed a 38 percent increase in new-car shopper activity share from May 2009 to May 2010. For its unprecedented market share success, Kia points primarily to the success of the Kia Soul with its highly popular “Hamster” commercial ad campaign.
In addition to the Soul, however, the Kia Sorento and Forte models also did quite well. These two models were actually responsible for the brand’s upward climb in market rank for May 2010.
Based largely on its Cash for Clunkers program in 2009, GMC gained more popularity with new-car shoppers. GMC’s leading models are the Acadia and Terrain crossover.
Subaru, on the other hand, boasts of its balanced lineup with its Forester SUV, Outback and Legacy models, which have recently gained increase customer interest,
James Bell, the executive market analyst for Kelley Blue Book and kbb.com talked about their latest analysis. He said: “Many brands, including Hyundai and Kia, we see on the top five upward climbers and bottom five downward decliners list for May 2010 would have been shocking to many consumers and industry professionals if you would have shown them this data just a few years ago.
