What you need to know

Luxury automotive has migrated to prioritize sustainable and technological offerings. While the traditional target audience of older buyers no longer identifies with the luxury auto lifestyle as much as they used to, OEMs have a newfound opportunity to reach younger consumers and engage with them in meaningful, yet unconventional, ways that can generate brand interest and affinity earlier on in a consumer’s life, which could turn to longer-term loyalty.

Key issues covered in this Report

  • The impact of COVID-19 on consumer behavior and attitudes toward the luxury vehicle market

  • How investments in sustainable and tech-forward vehicles stemming from the 2008 Great Recession have paid off for luxury OEMs

  • The focus of younger car buyers as the new target demographic for luxury vehicles

Definition

This Report covers the sale of new domestic and imported luxury vehicles, consumer perceptions of luxury brands and attitudes toward luxury vehicles. While there is no hard definition for what constitutes a luxury vehicle, Mintel has compiled a list of vehicles based on branding, costs and features to identify luxury vehicles in the market today.

Sales figures throughout this Report apply to new luxury vehicles and do not include pre-owned vehicles.

For the purposes of this Report, Mintel has used the following consumer definitions:

Luxury Consumers:

Affluent: an individual who has investable assets between $500,000-$1 million

High net worth: an individual who has more than $1 million in investable assets

This Report builds on the analysis presented in Luxury Cars – US, October 2019.

Economic and other assumptions

Mintel’s economic assumptions are based on CBO estimates released on February 1, 2021. The CBO’s previous forecast for US GDP to fall by 5.8% in 2020 was revised after a stronger second half of the year and the updated estimate indicates negative 3.5% GDP for the year. The CBO forecasts GDP to grow by 4.6% in 2021 and projects unemployment to continue to fall to average 5.7% for the year.

COVID-19: US context

The first COVID-19 case was confirmed in the US in January 2020. It was declared a global health pandemic and national emergency in early March 2020. Across the US, various stay-at-home orders were put in place in Spring 2020, and nonessential businesses and school districts closed or shifted to remote operations. The remainder of 2020 saw rolling orders, as states and local governments relaxed and reinforced guidelines according to the spread of the virus in each region.

Vaccine distribution began in December 2020, and it is expected to take anywhere from July to December 2021 for 70-90% of the population to be vaccinated to reach herd immunity. Mintel anticipates business operations in the US will remain in a state of flux through 2021 as the vaccine is widely administered.

Back to top