Perception of cars

First of all we think interesting to analyse the perception of cars in general before looking on the perception of brands.

According to a study of the French organism “ifops”, in 2012 54% of people perceive cars as a means of transport and 31% perceive it as the expression of their freedom. The interesting point here is that in 2010 40% of people considered cars as the expression of freedom and this change of perception can be explain by two factors: the fact that cars are becoming banal and the increase of the stress in the use of cars (traffic jam, oil consumption, aggressiveness of drivers,…). In this study no one consider cars as a symbol of social success and only 2% associate cars to a pleasure.

This study put forward a trend that we have already talked about in the first point of this post is the fact that cars are becoming banal. Indeed only 27% of people still consider cars as an object of dream (vs 30% in 2011). However, this trend has to be taken carefully because for young people and above young people in rural places cars are still consider as an object of dream by 38% of people. In big cities people have a different relation with cars due to the alternatives they have (bus, metro, train,…) while in rural areas the cars is often unavoidable.

Cars are becoming banal but people still need it. The study also shows that for 86% of people think that they need to have a car when 14% of people think that having its own car is out of date. Those figures can be explained by the use people have of their cars. A majority of people use cars to go to work and more than 61% of people plan to take their cars to go in holiday. As alternatives to cars are not developed enough people still need to buy their own cars.

In this process of buying the perception of brands will be a decisive factor but what are those perceptions?