You want customers to keep coming back to buy your product or service. That’s no less so for the auto industry.

Still, surveys are showing that brand loyalty in the auto industry in the U.S. is declining. The latest survey from Experian Automotive shows that there has been a drop of 10 percent in 10 years of customer loyalty. It was 49.1 percent in 1998 but it is down to 39.9 percent this year.

That loss is costing billions. Pundits point out that loss of customer loyalty is costing the Detroit auto makers as much as $3 billion in lost sales a year.

One of the reasons for the decline in brand loyalty is the increase in the amount of models available. There are 300 models now being offered in today’s market.

So is there hope? Well, sorta. Auto makers, continue the pundits, would do themselves good if they had a program that helped to build customer loyalty. An auto maker with 10 million customers, for example, would see about 1.5 million return to the market each year. If the auto makers can increase customer loyalty by just 1 percent, that would account for $405 million in additional revenue.