Costco, Kohl's Lead Top 10 Customer Satisfaction Rankings

By Adam Blair
Customer satisfaction is a notoriously tricky thing to measure, but if anyone can do it, the well-respected publication Consumer Reports can. The magazine's latest issue surveyed more than 26,000 of its readers to discover how the nation's Top 10 big-box and department store retailers rank by customer satisfaction.

Costco, Kohl's and JCPenney took the first three spots in the rankings, which were based on 55,108 ratings of stores (and their e-commerce versions) by 26,344 Consumer Reports readers in the spring of 2011. Costco's brick-and-mortar stores scored 84 out of a possible 100, followed by Kohl's score of 81 and JCPenney's 80.

Kmart and Walmart brought up the rear: each had a walk-in score of 71. Walmart's online store did slightly better with a 77; there was insufficient data to rank Kmart's e-commerce site.

While the survey results may be good news for the winners, they carry a warning for everyone about in-store shopping versus online commerce. Survey respondents in general were less satisfied with the service they receive in brick-and-mortar stores than online: "Although in-person interaction is impossible on the Web, 63% of the online shoppers said the service they received was excellent or very good; only 47% of in-store shoppers rated the quality of sales help that high," according to the article accompanying the rankings.

Following are the Top 10 retailers ranked by customer satisfaction, appearing in the March 2012 Consumer Reports, with the scores for their brick-and-mortar and online stores. Scores are out of a possible 100.

                                    Brick-and-mortar        Online
1) Costco                     84                                88
2) Kohl's                      81                                84
3) JCPenney                80                                82
4) Target                      79                                80
5) Macy's                     78                                82
6) Meijer                      78                                N/A
7) Sears                       77                                77
8) Sam's Club             77                                79
9) Kmart                      71                                N/A
10) Walmart                71                                77