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When you’re shopping, the stores that treat you the best are the ones that deserve your money, right?
The American Customer Satisfaction Index once each year rates retailers and let you know who is making you happy and who isn’t.
The highest score in the specialty retail stores category goes to Costco Wholesale. They beat all the department stores with all their marble and fancy fixtures. Costco is #1 year after year.
This year, though, Costco has a crosstown rival who has nudged past them in the department and discount stores category: Nordstrom. This company has a culture of exceptional service, though they are a completely different kind of store than Costco!
The other two wholesale clubs also got great scores, though not as high as Costco.
Who stunk it up? Walmart got the worst score of any retailer in the country.
In the supermarket industry, there’s a new champion: Trader Joe’s. They got the best rating of any supermarket chain in the country for customer service, in addition to having great prices. They did significantly better than Whole Foods, which is a beautiful chain but frightfully more expensive.
The other supermarket that did well is regional chain Wegmans in the Northeast. (Walmart came in last in groceries in addition to as a general retailer.) Kroger did just OK, but not great. Aldi, meanwhile, tied with Whole Foods. If you live in the 30+ states with Aldi, they do a phenomenal job at saving you money on groceries. (Interestingly, Aldi and Trader Joe’s both have common ownership.)
When you go to shop with all the competition out there, you’ll see that marketshare migrates to the winners.
Finally, online sellers pretty much across the line get great ratings. That’s yet another challenge to traditional brick-and-mortars in our nation’s hyper-competitive retail space.
This post was last modified on March 22, 2017 1:50 pm
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