General Motors' accelerating issues with a series of recalls, reports of deaths resulting from ignition defects and government scrutiny has sent its consumer perception down to its lowest levels since the bankruptcy rumors of August 2012.
However, comparisons to Toyota’s 2010 recall woes are not yet justified: it took the Japanese car maker about one month to go from one of the top perceived car brands to hitting extremely low levels in one of the biggest brand crises in the past four years.
GM’s perception began dropping one month ago and they have only taken a very small percentage of the perception drop Toyota took over the same amount of time back in 2010.
According to YouGov BrandIndex measurements, it took Toyota approximately 664 days (nearly two years), to recover from its crisis.
GM and Toyota were measured using YouGov BrandIndex’s Buzz score, which asks respondents "If you've heard anything about the brand in the last two weeks, through advertising, news or word of mouth, was it positive or negative?". All respondents were age 18 and over.
YouGov BrandIndex’s Buzz and Value scores range is from 100 to -100 and compiled by subtracting negative feedback from positive. A zero score means equal positive and negative feedback.
Over the past month, GM has seen its Buzz score drop from 8 on February 12th to its current -9. When GM declared bankruptcy in August 2012, its Buzz score reached -12.
By comparison, Toyota went from a 37 Buzz score on January 13, 2010 to -63 by February 18, 2010.
Buzz: Toyota, General Motors (Day 1 = 3 months before respective recall announcements)
