Most current owners of luxury cars tend to have purchased a car previously; the customer has potentially developed an attitude toward it. Here, an attitude becomes an evaluating judgment and not desire based on prior or present experience such as previous satisfaction from dealers or products and services after sales and warranty, driving experience, and socio-economic status of customers. It is also possible that an attitude can be developed based on prior information without experience, as when consumers develop preferences or biases for or against brands based on the brands’ images in the marketplace. This also depends largely on purchasing power of individual customers. Customers may have a favorable attitude towards some manufacturers’ luxury cars, but may lack the ability due to insufficient purchasing power or willingness to take buying action. On the other hand, luxury or lower luxury (lower-priced) manufacturers’ cars may be neglected by customers who have high purchasing power (or over-purchasing power in this sense). For example, most buyers (with high, medium, or low income) tend to have a preferable attitude towards some manufacturers’ luxury cars such as Aston Martin, Bentley, Ferrari, Porsche, BMW, Benz, Audi, and Rolls-Royce, though the majority of them might not even have had a test drive before. The difference is that customers with low to medium income may still also anticipate the quality of smaller sized cars of manufacturers from the lower segments such as Fiat, Ford, Peugeot, and Vauxhall, as these cars are affordable to them. In other words, cars from lower segments have the meaning of ‘reality’ to them. In contrast, the better-off buyers will only appreciate expensive cars from luxury marquees and may disregard inexpensive cars from a luxury one e.g., the least expensive Audi A4 or BMW 3 Series as their choices.
(1) reliability
(12) comfort
