Conquest is the biggest immediate growth opportunity for dealers, with industry loyalty declining and defections soaring, according to S&P Global.
First things first: The findings, drawn from 2016 to 2025 data shared during a recent S&P Global Mobility webinar, underscore the importance of dealerships building and cultivating their customer base more than ever.
Industry loyalty fell about 0.5 percentage points to roughly 51% in 2025, while conquest volume rose for a fourth consecutive year and defections approached 4 million households, accounting for nearly half of all owners.
Return-to-market volume has risen steadily over the past three years—up 9% from 2022-23, 4% from 2023-24 and 0.5% from 2024-25—but remains 5% below its 2016 peak of 8.5 million households.
Why it matters: The data points to a bigger near-term opportunity in winning shoppers from competing brands, not just retaining existing customers.
Because as brand loyalty softens and more households re-enter the market, retailers that sharpen targeting, trade-in strategies, and personalized outreach may be better positioned to capture switching buyers.
Worth noting: Competitive opportunity is becoming more granular, with brand loyalty and conquest/defection ratio (gaining customers versus losing them) shifting more year over year, according to S&P Global’s findings.
In 2025, loyalty varied across trims within the same model, revealing one model with an almost 16-point loyalty gap across trims and another with an almost 17-point gap.
Tesla led 2025 loyalty at 59.5% but fell 6 points YoY, contributing to a 1.3% luxury decline—and, with Mercedes-Benz and BMW, was one of the only brands above average in both loyalty and conquest/defection.
Ford ranked second in brand loyalty for 2025 at 58.8%, Chevrolet third at 57.8%, and Toyota fourth, with a 1.7-point YoY gain. The top four brands were separated by only about 2 percentage points.
In 2024, Hyundai and Subaru were the only mainstream brands above average in both loyalty and conquest/defection.
But in 2025, Subaru fell below average in conquest/defection and Hyundai dropped below average in loyalty.
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Digging deeper: Amid shifting loyalty dynamics, inventory still matters when it comes to sustaining customer loyalty, but less mechanically than before, according to S&P Global.
From January 2022 to April 2024, inventory and loyalty were strongly correlated at 0.88, but once inventory reached 3 million units, the relationship briefly turned negative as incentives and cross-shopping increased.
By late 2025, the correlation turned positive again at 0.62, signaling that as supply normalizes, pricing and competitive positioning matter nearly as much as availability.
What they’re saying: “Whereas loyalty still hasn't recovered back to pre-pandemic levels, conquest volume quickly jumped back to pre-pandemic levels, which is really a sign of the state of the industry that we're in right now…,” explained Vince Palomarez, Director, Loyalty, S& Global Mobility. “….households may not be as loyal to their previous brands as they were in the past ….They may be more interested in moving out to another brand or trying different vehicles now that…there's more vehicles on the market.”
Bottom line: Dealers cannot rely as heavily on loyalty to drive repeat business as they once did. With more shoppers open to switching brands, the stores that stand out on inventory, pricing, incentives, and targeted marketing may have the best chance to turn rising defections into conquest gains.
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