SCHAUMBURG, Ill. — When comes to loyalty, Subaru leads the way, with 67% of consumers who own a Subaru returning to the market to buy another Subaru, according to Experian Automotive’s latest vehicle loyalty rates. Among multi-brand manufacturers, Ford led the way with 67.5% of consumers who own a Ford remaining loyal to the Ford family when purchasing a new vehicle.

Experian’s analysis looked at nearly 6.8 million household repurchase events that occurred between October 2014 and September 2015. From a manufacturer perspective, Subaru, Ford, Toyota and GM hold the top four spots for loyalty, with only 0.5 percentage points separating them.

“It’s exciting to see that manufacturers’ efforts to improve owner loyalty are working,” said Brad Smith, director of automotive statistics and consulting for Experian. “Over the last few years, loyalty rates have increased, and these improvements are key to the industry. Understanding rates of consumer loyalty among vehicle brands, makes and models helps to drive better business decisions, such as a dealer selecting inventory and targeting advertising or a manufacturer making adjustments to a vehicle’s design and creating more competitive promotional strategies.”

Among luxury brands, Mercedes-Benz leads the way with 65.1% of owners remaining loyal to the brand. Overall, Mercedes-Benz ranked third.

From a model perspective, loyalty rates cut across the luxury and nonluxury spectrum. The Top 4 are luxury brands — Land Rover Range Rover, Mercedes-Benz S Class, Lincoln MKZ and Mercedes-Benz 2500 Sprinter Van. Nonluxury models in the Top 10 include the Nissan Leaf (fifth), Dodge Ram 1500 (sixth), Hyundai Genesis (eighth), Kia Soul (ninth) and Subaru Forester (10th).

Here are other findings from Experian’s loyalty rate report:

• North Dakota is the most loyal state, with 67.2 percent of owners remaining loyal to their brands. Michigan (66.4 percent) and Iowa (65.8 percent) round out the Top 3 states with the most brand loyal consumers.

• Consumers who lease are more loyal to their brands, with 69% remaining loyal to a brand, compared with 56.9% of consumers with loans.

• Individuals with captive finance contracts (Ford Credit, Toyota Financial, etc.) are more brand loyal, with 63.8% repurchasing the same brand, compared with 58% of consumers with loans from independent finance sources.