Ranking of car brands: BMW dominates the social web

Despite high fuel prices and long holiday traffic jams, the car remains the Germans’ favourite “child” – also in the social media. In the first half of July the car manufacturers were discussed about half a million times in Facebook, Twitter etc. Undisputed leader in this period, with slightly less than 76,000 hits in the German Social Web: BMW.
The Munich manufacturer leads not only in absolute numbers, but also got the most positive responses, whereas Opel received the most negative responses among all manufacturers. This is the result of the online analysis tool “Web Analyzer”, that analyses not only quantity but also the tonality of each statement.
Despite the numerous criticisms (1624 postings), the economically stricken car manufacturer scored nevertheless a minor success. With over 59 000 entries (of which 1687 positive) Opel had the edge over its competitor VW (44,000 entries in total, of which 1562 positive) who is the leader regarding the number of new car registrations. Even its subsidiary company Audi (1,825 positive and 337 negative and neutral 46 072 responses) was discussed more often than VW.

Among the largest car importers Renault reverses the actual power relations – at least in the social web. Here the French are – with almost 14,000 entries – significantly ahead from Skoda (approximately 9,000). The Czech manufacturer has a slightly bigger market share (4.8 percent) than Renault (Dacia inclusive) of 4.7 percent regarding new car registrations in Germany.
The Korean company Hyundai – provoking fear among the big car manufacturers and honored at the last IAA by the legendary YouTube video with VW-CEO Martin Winterkorn – was just mentioned about 6,000 times during the investigation period in the German social media. But this is likely to change over the next few years.

Top Ten: These brands are discussed most in the German Social Web:

Ranking of all monitored brands: