Answers Corp., owner and operator of Answers.com and a provider of cloud-based customer experience solutions, today announced preliminary findings from its Answers Experience Index (AXI): 2014 U.S. Retail Report, a multichannel, customer experience study that will be published in mid-December. The study will report customer satisfaction scores for the top 100 retail websites, top 30 retail chain stores and top 30 retail mobile experiences.
Based on the preliminary consumer shopping data from the 2014 AXI, Amazon is once again leading in online customer satisfaction, but its leadership is eroding. Amazon is down four points from its 2013 score to 84 (on a 100-point scale), and leads QVC.com and Netflix by just one point. Similarly, in terms of mobile customer satisfaction, Amazon scored 84, three points below their 2013 score. The early front-runners in retail store chain customer satisfaction include Barnes & Noble (84) and Costco (82).
“As retail technologies and capabilities improve, customers expect a lot more from their digital shopping experiences. Based on the preliminary data, Amazon.com’s decline in customer satisfaction could be a reflection of its failure to keep up with those rising expectations. In addition, Amazon.com’s competitors are gaining ground as they elevate their respective shopping experiences across multiple channels,” said Jim Yang, SVP of Products, Marketing and Services, Answers Cloud Services. “As Answers’ methodology has proven, customer expectations are an important contributor to the overall customer experience.”
Other Preliminary Key Findings on Consumer 2014 Holiday Season Shopping Behavior:
● Showrooming is here to stay. 66% of store purchasers said they visited the store’s website on their phone while in the store, compared to 55% in 2013.
● Black Friday no longer rules the roost. While Black Friday continues to kick off the “official” holiday shopping season, just as many consumers will be shopping on Cyber Monday (46%) as will be on Black Friday (46%).
● Mobile is surpassing desktop. Mobile shoppers are more likely to be shopping on Cyber Monday (53%) than more traditional e-commerce shoppers (45%).
● Mobile payments are not ready for takeoff. More than 60% of shoppers said they will not use a mobile payment service like Google Wallet or Apple Pay to purchase items in a store. The 40% who said they might use such a service were twice as likely to choose Google over Apple.
To date Answers has collected over 15,000 survey responses from consumers, measuring Content, Functionality, Merchandise and Price for online and mobile shoppers and Store Environment, Service, Merchandise and Price for in-store shoppers, revealing insights into which retailers are providing their customers with the most satisfying shopping experience this holiday season. For a deeper dive into the results, visit the ForeSee Blog.