Costco beats Amazon on internet retail sales

US retailer Costco has knocked Amazon off the top spot as the US’ favourite online retailer, a new survey has revealed, as breweries become the category consumers are most content with.

Customer satisfaction with US retail has fallen

The American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), which benchmarks customer satisfaction across multiple categories across the US economy, found the membership-based warehouse beat the online giant by one mark in its first entry in the list, clocking up 83 points, ahead of Amazon’s 82 (out of 100).

It also posted its best growth performance in four years, the ACSI pointed out.

“Costco is the value leader among online retailers and its Kirkland brand may be part of the reason why; Kirkland manufactures quality products at low cost, which helps keep competing brand prices low,” it said.

However, overall consumer satisfaction in retail fell for the second year in a row, down 0.9% to 77.4 and the ACIS said even though internet shopping was the most popular way of shopping, it was still ‘showing the strain’, as customer satisfaction fell by around 2.4% to 80 (out of 100), amid worsening customer service.

Mobile apps, however, are a bright spot, receiving high marks of 86 for quality and 85 for reliability,  ahead of satisfaction with retailers’ websites.

The survey also found that breweries were the most popular category of all, scoring a score of 85, ahead of internet shopping (80) and supermarkets (78). ABInbev was the brewery which won the highest score, ahead of Molson Coors, in the second spot.

The survey, which interviews around 300,000 customers each year in more than 400 companies across 46 different industries, is updated quarterly and serves as a key macroeconomic indicator of the health of the nation’s economy, it says, by helping predict consumer spending and GDP growth, with firms that show higher levels of customer satisfaction leading to higher earnings and stock returns compared to their competitors.