E-shopping = e-satisfaction = booming sales
In Larry Freed’s opinion, there’s a good
reason online sales continue to outperform offline sales: Customers like
the online shopping experience.
Freed’s company, ForeSee Results Inc., last month
released the latest report on customer satisfaction with online shopping
and, as it has since ForeSee began measuring satisfaction, online retailing
shone. Customer satisfaction with online retailing, based on the American
Customer Satisfaction Index, scored an 84 on a scale of 100, 1 point higher
than last year and ahead of customer satisfaction with other online
consumer services. The national average for all companies in the American
Customer Satisfaction Index is 74.
“When we see increasing customer satisfaction, we
expect to see—and we do see—increasing profitability,”
Freed says. “Customer satisfaction drives sales, loyalty and
profitability.”
Customer satisfaction with the four categories of
e-commerce that ForeSee measures—retailing, brokerages, travel and
auctions—registered 80.8, up 4.1% from 77.6 a year ago. After
e-retail, the auction category is the next highest-rated, at 78, followed
by travel, 77 and brokerages, 76. “E-retail is clearly the
standard-setter and the other categories don’t quite measure
up,” Freed says.
Stand-outs in the e-retail category are Amazon.com and
BarnesandNoble.com, which scored 88 and 86 respectively. EBay also is
strong, with an 84. “Amazon’s score shows they are remarkably
close to delivering customers’ ideal,” Freed says.
“Maintaining strength while evolving the business model is even
more impressive.
Freed notes that there is a closer relationship between
customer satisfaction and increased sales and profits online than there is
offline. A bad store experience requires the customer to leave the store
and find a new place to buy the product, so the customer has to invest some
time and effort into making the switch. Not so online. “You can click
away from a store and be in three or four other stores right away,”
he says. “It’s immediate.”
ForeSee creates its measurements through a formula
based on surveys of users of the products and services being measured. The
ACSI is produced quarterly and covers a wide range of goods and services
used by Americans. It is produced at the University of Michigan in
partnership with the American Society for Quality and the CFI Group.
ForeSee Results co-sponsors the e-commerce portion of the ACSI, as well as
the annual e-business report included in the ACSI each August.
