While much of the retail sector anticipates a turnaround in 2021, customer satisfaction is not heading in the right direction — including at Apple, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index’s (ACSI) Retail and Consumer Shipping Report 2020-2021.
Overall, the retail sector declines 2.3% to a score of 75.5 (out of 100). This is the lowest ACSI score posted for the sector since 2015.
The ACSI report covers six retail industries – department and discount stores, specialty retail stores, health and personal care stores, supermarkets, Internet retail, and gas stations – as well as consumer shipping and the U.S. Postal Service. mong the six retail categories, not one escapes the trend of declining customer satisfaction in 2020.
According to the ACSI, for 2020, online retail loses the most ground among all retail categories, tumbling 3.7% to an ACSI score of 78. Nordstrom captures the industry lead despite retreating 1% to 81. In second place, Costco (down 1%), Etsy (down 2%), and Newegg (down 1%) are all deadlocked at 80. Former industry leader Amazon tumbles 5% to an all-time low score of 79.
With a stable score of 78, Target is the only e-commerce retailer to buck the downward ACSI trend. Most of the industry scores below the average of 78. Macy’s and Wayfair both tumble 4% to scores of 77, tied with eBay (down 3%). Along with Amazon, smaller sites show the steepest decline in the category, plunging 5% to 75. Another big-tech name, Apple, retreats 4% to 75.
ACSI says Walmart and Sears remain the “industry bottom dwellers.” Walmart inches back 1% to 73, while Sears fizzles 1% to 72.
The American Customer Satisfaction Index has been around for for 25 years. It measures and analyzes customer satisfaction with more than 400 companies in 47 industries and 10 economic sectors, including various services of federal and local government agencies. Reported on a scale of 0 to 100, scores are based on data from interviews with roughly 500,000 customers annually.
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