Walmart Hit by Poor Showing in Consumer Survey

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 31, 5:29PM EST · Published Jan 31, 11:30AM EST

Walmart Hit by Poor Showing in Consumer Survey — © JannHuizenga / iStock Unreleased via Getty Images

The American Customer Satisfaction Index is a gold standard of research about consumer preferences. In its just-released ACSI Retail and Consumer Shipping Study 2023-2024, Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT | WMT Price Prediction) finished last in the Supermarket, Hypermarket, and Online Multimarket categories. It finished tied for first in the Drugstore category. The study was based on questioning 40,264 randomly picked customers. They were contacted via email from January to December 2023. Scores were based on a 0 to 100 scale.

Walmart’s scores were notable because it is America’s largest retailer. It is said that 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of one of its stores.

Customer Dissatisfaction

Walmart customer satisfaction

The Supermarket category included 20 retailers. The average score for the category was 79, and Walmart’s score was 74. Costco, H-E-B, and Publix led the category, each scoring 85. Supermarket scores were based on store hours, store layout, variety of merchandise, courtesy of staff, store layout, and quality of pharmacy services, among other metrics.

Walmart finished last in the Hypermarket category, which is part of the ACSI’s larger category of General Merchandise Retailers. Among all General Merchandise Retailers, the average score was 77. Walmart scored 73. The leader among hypermarkets was Target with a score of 81. The metrics for this category covered ease of pickup, quality of mobile app, quality of membership programs, convenience of store location, readiness of pickup, and variety of merchandise, among other measures. (See the 10 best alternatives and affordable options to Walmart.)

Walmart finished last in the category of Online Multimarket Retailers, which was part of the larger Online Retail category. The average for the larger category was 80. Walmart scored 76. The leader in Online Multimarket Retailers was Amazon at 83. Metrics in this category included a mobile app, ease of navigation, variety of shipping options, and helpfulness of customer support, among other measures.

Walmart finished tied for first in the Drugstore category, the same as “All Other.” The average score was 77. Walmart’s score was 82. Metrics in this category included a mobile app, friendliness and layout of the store, the ability to provide brand names, the checkout process, and the frequency of sales and promotions, among others.

In the final analysis, poor service may not be a problem. Massive numbers of people continue to shop at Walmart.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.