You would think that the image and reputation of Samsung would suffer heavily after the global recall of the Galaxy Note 7 due to the battery-catching-on-fire incidents. But according to a Reuters / Ipsos poll in the US, Samsung owners remain loyal to the brand and can actually be compared to how iPhone owners stick to the Apple brand. Of course the more important numbers that would prove people still trust the brand would be sales, but we probably won’t see the effect yet until the end of the year numbers are in.
To be fair, the survey, which involves around 5,000 people in 50 states, did not directly ask people if the recall had anything to do with their answers. The questions mostly involved asking people if they were interested in buying Samsung phones. 91% of current Samsung owners said they would buy another smartphone from the OEM. 92% of current users would also most probably buy any Samsung product in general. This is comparable to the loyalty of the Apple owners surveyed, getting 92% and 89% respectively in both questions as well.
As for those recall-related questions, 27% of those aware of the recall would still first consider a Samsung smartphone when shopping for a new phone. For those who did not know there was a recall (aka those living under a digital rock), 25% would first consider getting a device from the Korean OEM. This is probably more telling, as those who answered this were not necessarily already owners of a Samsung device.
According to Samsung, most customers chose to replace their Galaxy Note 7 with another Samsung device. However, they did not indicate what choices other than Samsung they gave to them. We still probably won’t see the business effects of the recall until the end-of-year sales report vis a vis their sales projection.
VIA: Reuters
