Which car brands connect with women? (2024)

BLOG Feb 21, 2023

Buick, Toyota are tops with women buyers; truck brandstrail

For mainstream automotive brands to show continued growth inchallenging economic times, they must find traction across alldemographics. The latest analysis from S&P Global Mobilityshows that some brands are enjoying much more success with womenbuyers.

Among the top 25 brands in the United States, Buick rankedhighest in 2022 of women's share of brand, at 55.0% of personal newvehicle registrations, followed by Mitsubishi, Mini, Lexus,Infiniti, Mazda, and Kia. In terms of total volumes ofpersonal vehicles registered to women in 2022, Toyota clearlyranked above all other brands.

On the flip side, Ram placed lowest with just 17% of newpersonal vehicle registrations going to women, followed by GMC,Ford, Tesla, and Dodge. The bottom-two brands' reliance on trucksis reflected in their male bias. Tesla is the outlier there,showing that despite the success of its Model Y compact SUV in astrongly female segment, its personal vehicle registrations have adecidedly male skew.

Brands with highest female buyerrepresentation

Industry average 41.2%

Source: S&P Global Mobility CY 2022 vehicle registrationdata

Brands with lowest female buyer representation

Source: S&P Global Mobility CY 2022 vehicle registrationdata

Although share of brand is one way to examine demographicpreferences, overall volume registrations to women consumers alsois a critical measurement.

On a pure volume level, Toyota secured the most hearts and mindsof women car buyers in 2022 by hundreds of thousands of personalregistrations.

Brands with highest volume of registrations amongwomen

Brand Volume Women as % of total

Source: S&P Global Mobility CY 2022 vehicle registrationdata

Why the importance of attracting the female audience? For onething, women make up more than half of the population, 50.5%according to the most recent US census, and influence the vastmajority of vehicle purchases.

Additionally, women buyers consistently show more brand loyaltythan men, on average 4 percentage points more likely to stick withthe same brand, according to S&P Global Mobility. Female brandloyalty figures are even higher for the brands with the highestpercentage of women buyers: 9.2 percentage points more loyal thanmen for Mini vehicles, 7.6 for Mitsubishi, 5.2 for Lexus andInfiniti, and 4.3 for Buick. The only mainstream full-line brandwith higher loyalty among men than women was Ford.

Why the success for Buick? According to Marc Bland, chiefdiversity officer for S&P Global Mobility, some of the successcomes from GM's extra focus on female buyers: "The majority of theOEMs now have a minority dealer organization, but GM takes it astep further: They have a Women's Retail Network."

Members of GM's WRN include all female dealer principals anddepartment managers. The group holds annual meetings with briefingsabout best practices, ensuring strong and equitable representationacross GM's entire dealership network. The WRN also launched ascholarship for women entering automotive-related fields of studymore than a decade ago.

"How consumers are treated at the dealership is important," saidCheryl Woodworth, associate director of consulting for S&PGlobal Mobility. "The evolution of thecar-buying process, entailing less negotiation and withpotentially more of the buying process online, is very appealing towomen."

Safety is also a top priority for women buyers, and the US autoindustry's only female CEO made that a top priority for GM. One ofMary Barra's first initiatives was Speak Up for Safety - aninitiative stemming from GM's ignition switch recall - that createda framework for employees to call out perceived safety risks in anymeeting.

"Those kinds of things resonate out from GM's 200,000 employees,to their dinner tables, their families, their extended families andfriends," Bland said. "It creates this cloud that GM has safety atit* core."

But not all GM brands are seeing this boost. Cadillac andChevrolet both placed in the bottom-half of rankings, withtruck-heavy GMC near the bottom.

Part of Buick's strength comes from its product portfolio, whichis entirely made up of compact and midsize SUVs. The other GMbrands' broader offerings, including large SUVs, trucks, andperformance cars, skew more heavily towards male buyers. But ageneral focus on women buyers may be insufficient. Breaking it downinto further ethnic or geographical subsets may be necessary for anOEM or dealer to better target its marketing.

"As we move to 2023 and beyond, best practices at OEMs shouldlook at women as not just one hom*ogenous group," Bland said. "Forexample, African-American women registered more new vehicles thantheir male counterparts. And the Chevrolet Silverado is in thetop-10 volume vehicles registered among Hispanic women."

Broader representation across different consumer groups is keyfor any brand that hopes to grow, and some brands clearly have workto do.

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This article was published by S&P Global Mobility and not by S&P Global Ratings, which is a separately managed division of S&P Global.