Perodua is Southeast Asia’s top car brand, according to a survey by CampaignAsia. Together with Millieu Insight, the publication surveyed 10 sectors in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore and the Philippines.
The survey criteria included; “awareness, purchase, quality, buying experience, customer service, trustworthiness, innovation, brand touchpoints (ease of use across all digital and offline interactions), and advocacy (degree of recommendation).”
SURVEY RESULTS
Perodua scored the highest points overall with 58.3 per cent, overtaking auto giant Toyota’s 57.01 per cent by a slim margin. The region’s top 10 brands are dominated by Western car brands such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Tesla, Audi and Ford. Though, the survey’s top 4 spots belong to more affordable, Asian brands including Honda and Geely as third and fourth place.
Perodua, a Malaysian car brand, performed exceptionally in its home country, but did not appear in the top 10 results of the other countries. Survey results showed that 83 per cent of Malaysia’s participants are aware of the brand and scored highly for buying experience and customer service. The brand’s noteworthy province in its own country is responsible for its slight score advantage over Toyota.
In the results of each country’s individual surveys, Toyota consistently emerged in the top 5. The auto giant came out on top for Thailand and the Philippines. Across the region, Toyota scored highest for brand awareness, buying experiences, and customer service.
Honda, on the other hand, also emerged in the top five of all surveyed countries. The Japanese brand ranked number one for Vietnam and Indonesia. Vietnamese customers ranked Honda the highest in buying experience and customer service. In both countries, motorcycles are a popular choice for transport, for which Honda is the top-performing brand in the world.
Chinese conglomerate Geely comes in at number 4, thanks to its high scores from Vietnamese customers. 96 per cent and 91 per cent of Vietnamese participants rated it highly in customer service and buying experience respectively.
Another Malaysian carmaker, Proton, appeared in the top 10 as the 7th in ranking. It is known as Malaysia’s “national car brand.” In 2017, Geely bought 49.9 per cent share in Proton.
The remaining car brands in the top 10 include BMW at #5, Mercedes-Benz at #6, Tesla at #8, Audi at #9, and Ford at #10.
WHAT DOES THIS TELL US?
Perodua, Geely, and Proton’s appearances in the top 10 are due to high ratings in individual countries. Proton and Perodua only appeared in Malaysia’s results, while Geely appeared only in Vietnam’s. While Toyota did not reach the number one spot, it appeared consistently among CampaignAsia’s participating countries. Both Toyota and Honda appeared as the #1 brand in 2 countries each.
The frequent presence of multiple Japanese car brands in the results of all participating countries implies that Japan’s legacy car brands (Toyota, Honda, Mazda, Isuzu, etc.) are still going strong in Southeast Asia, despite the rise of EVs worldwide. These Japanese brands topped the performance of the Western brands that appeared in the survey results. From all of the countries surveyed, only Singapore showed 2 Western brands (BMW at #1 and Audi at #3) in their top 3. The remaining countries’ top 3 car brands contained only one Western company.
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