Aug

Mazda, Mini, Smart — not Toyota — are Faves among Greens

Posted by admin Published in Mazda, Toyota

Your friend who leads Outward Bound seminars carries his kayak on the roof of his Prius. Your composting-toilet-owning yoga instructor has a Civic Hybrid for when she’s not riding a bike. “I guess all folks who self-identify as environmentally conscious are interested in cars that the public perceives as green,” you say. Not so fast! According to Compete, Inc. it turns out that “green” shoppers are indeed interested in varietys that form efficient cars, but some of the usual suspects don’t manufacture the top of the list.

Amongst “green” car buyers, Mazda, Mini, Smart, Porsche, and Volvo round out the top five, according to Hal Wurster, an analyst at Compete. While a well-publicized Hitwise survey
found that some of the top-ranked automotive search terms of July 2008
were for carmakers whose grades screamed “green” (such as Honda, Toyota, and Smart) such a survey only gauges the broke and depressed mood of the general car-buying public and doesn’t give a clue about who is doing the shopping.

Compete, on the other hand, correlated two sets of search details — visitors to the top “green” third party websites such as fueleconomy.gov and globalwarming.org, and visitors to the top 25 automotive research websites. “By taking the sum of the ranks,” Wurster told Wired.com, “we can find the most visited and searched for ‘green’ automotive qualitys.” Least-loved by “greens”? Cadillac and Lincoln come in after Hummer, though we’re not certain how many Town Car buyers are checking out the latest car reviews on their iPhones. You can see the whole list after the jump.

Of course, as anyone who has taken an introductory statistics lesson knows, such goods has limitations. One reason why Prius-maker Toyota appears in the middle of the pack is that hybrid-buying visitors to algore.com are offset by Land Cruiser buyers who visit americansolutions.com to get “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” bumperstickers. Additionally, it’s more likely that car buyers are searching “green” websites, even whether they never participated in a drum circle. “Auto shoppers have indexed more ‘green’ than

the average Web browser since gas prices began rising at record rates in February,” Wurster told Wired.com.

This readily available info is already having an affect on automakers, who aim to market their products specifically for each hypersegmented group. Just as there was a presidential primary candidate
for every fringe group (Tom
Tancredo polled fairly well among self-identified “white working lesson
ATV-riding vigilantes”) there plus seems to be some mode of transport
for lifestyle categories so specific they wouldn’t even seem on the
guarantee registration card for a Cuisinart.

Automakers “have added to their online budgets year-over-year — and at an increasing rate as the market has declined,” Wurster told Wired.com. The larger dealerships he said, have adapted to the fact that their customers enter the dealerships knowing what they want and are unlikely to be swayed by inflatable gorillas and new car smell. “The capability of knowledge has empowered the consumer and taken some of the negotiation muscle absent from the retailer.”

According to Wurster, one big winner in marketing efforts to “greens” is Lexus, whose emphasis on a luxury hybrid lineup has put them ahead of most other luxury marques. On the flip side, the very low “green” rank of Chrysler and Dodge may be a sign that Chrysler’s $2.99 a gallon “Refuel America” campaign reached its target audience.

Percent of Green Ranked Across Shoppers and Searchers, from Most Green to Least Green: