Unpacking Stellantis brands in the UK
The Stellantis group has been in the news recently over the abrupt resignation of Carlos Tavares as CEO at the end of last year. This resignation followed a series of setbacks for the brand, including a profit warning and a sharp decline in share price over the course of 2024. In this piece, we use data from YouGov BrandIndex to understand how various brands from the Stellantis stable have been performing.
In this piece, scores for each brand reflect the responses from only those aware of the brand, and we focus on four brand perception metrics - Impression, Quality, Value, and Reputation.
Vauxhall emerges as a strong performer, leading in Impression (12.6) and Value (12.5), indicating a solid brand image and perceived bang for the buck. Abarth also performs well in Impression (11.2) and Reputation (13.4), though it struggles with a negative score in Value (-5.3). Alfa Romeo stands out with a high Reputation score (17.9) and strong Quality perception (10.4), but its low Value score (-7.4) suggests potential pricing or affordability concerns.
Jeep combines strong scores in Quality (10.9) and Reputation (12.2), but its lower Impression (7.8) and negative Value score (-3.8) indicate opportunities for improvement in affordability and brand perception. Chrysler faces significant challenges, with negative scores in Impression (-2.2) and Value (-6.7) and only modest performance in Reputation (4.8).
FIAT and Citroën show weaker scores in Quality (-5.0 and -1.0, respectively) and Reputation (3.3 and 4.7), reflecting potential areas for brand repositioning or improvement in customer perception. These insights suggest that while some brands within Stellantis's portfolio excel, others have room for improvement in public perception and performance in key areas.
But what does this say about Stellantis performance as a whole? By creating a custom sector of these Stellantis portfolio brands, we can benchmark it against the industry average (which represents the over 50 automotive brands tracked by YouGov BrandIndex). Analysis reveals that Stellantis underperforms the car industry average in several brand perception metrics. The Impression score – a net measure of whether consumers have a positive impression of a brand or negative – is less than half that of the industry average at 6.3 vs 16.7. The story is the same for Quality (4.2 vs 18.8), Value (0.5 vs 4.5) and Reputation (8.9 vs 16.8).
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