A lot of SUVs are more or less the same thing as a minivan. The minivan, like the station wagon is a casualty of its own success. Both became synonymous with boring domestic middle class family life.
The recent Kia Carnival (name for US market IIRC) is an interesting response to this phenomenon. It's a true minivan that's just styled as if it's an SUV.
My theory is that there's (in USA) a pervasive emotional connection to driver seat height that's driven/exacerbated by the arms race to build larger and taller vehicles. Everyone wants their family to be in the safest vehicle possible, and higher driver seat height is a tactile, intuitive way to feel like you're in a larger and ostensibly safer vehicle, than other cars on the road with lower driver seat height.
Around where I am, the Kia Telluride is much more popular than the Carnival, which I think is telling.
