Now here’s something special…..
I posted earlier this evening about some possibilities for the Saab Pride submissions I’ve received. Shortly after writing that article, I received an email from an academic in Germany – a Dr. Rüdiger Hossiep, attached to the Psychology Dept at the Ruhr University in Bochum.
Dr Hosseip and a team of students set out on an ambitious mission to study the level of attachment that various people have to particular brands of cars. Their study involved over 1 million people and was focused on a German automotive forum called Motor Talk.
Here’s a Googletrans about the study:
They developed a procedure which allows the over three million records of more than 1.2 million users of the largest German car forum on the internet “motor-talk” to each other in relation to.
Their results bring all the existing brand rankings shaken: for example, identify themselves the followers of the cult-quirky brand SAAB 40 times more closely with their car as a Nissan driver.
Researchers have published the results of the evaluations of the last three years, for the first time. Parallel to this is launching an online survey, which will show what is behind the large or small is love. All motorists are invited to participate!
I’ve tried to complete the survey, but it’s in German and it doesn’t want to co-operate with the Googletrans software. I’ve put a link to the survey, below.
But back to the initial findings. There are tables for the last three years: 2007 to 2009. These measure something the team calls an ‘involvement index’ – which is basically a measure of the number of users, their level of engagement, with the number of registrations for that marque factored in as well.
Here are the results for 2009 and you can see the prior years’ rankings on the left:
Those numbers actually reflect a fall for Saab. They’re still on top of the index, but not by nearly as clear a margin as what they were in 2007, when they had nearly twice the index figure of the second place brand (Volvo, at that time).
Still, it’s a very interesting outcome and confirms hat many of us have believed for some time – that Saab has a very passionate following, and one that’s pretty web-savvy as well.
Saab pride, indeed!
You can read the findings page and see the prior years charts at the following links: the original in German, or in English via the Googletrans.
If you read German and would like to participate in their latest survey, asking what’s important to you about your car, then click here.
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