Costco and Kmart were locked in a tight battle for the 2017 Annual Roy Morgan Discount Department Store Customer Satisfaction Award, with Costco announced the winner this week.
Both stores improved their customer satisfaction over the past year. However, Costco’s monthly victory in November 2017, with a customer-satisfaction rating of 88.9 per cent, narrowly beat out leading rival Kmart on 88.3 per cent.
Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine says Kmart and Costco have clearly been the two stand-out discount department stores in 2017.
“Neither retailer has previously won the Annual Roy Morgan Discount Department Store Customer Satisfaction of the Year award, with previous winners including 2016 winner Target and Steinhoff Asia-Pacific outlets Harris Scarfe and Best & Less,” Ms Levine said.
“Although both Harris Scarfe and Best & Less have lost ground over the past year, both retain impressive customer-satisfaction ratings above 85 per cent and appear unaffected by the troubles affecting parent company Steinhoff International [which also owns furniture retailers Fantastic Furniture and Freedom].”
Defending Discount Department Store of the year Target has lost ground over the past year and has been unable to build on an early monthly victory in March 2017. Target’s customer-satisfaction rating of 87.5 per cent in November is down 0.4 per cent points compared with a year ago.
The findings are from Roy Morgan’s ‘Discount Department Store Satisfaction Report’ which is based on more than 9,000 interviews a year with people who have shopped at a discount department store in the past four weeks.