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Latest American Customer Satisfaction Index Results Released Today
Today the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) released its latest results on customer satisfaction. You can read the full commentary here. Covered in this quarter's results are some of my favorites – Beer and Chocolate. The categories covered in the Manufacturing Nondurable Goods Sector include Apparel, Athletics shoes, Breweries, Cigarettes, Food Manufacturing, Personal Care & Cleaning Products, Pet Food and Soft Drinks. If you follow the American Customer Satisfaction Index or ForeSee Results, you know that Customer Satisfaction as measured by the ACSI at a macro level is a leading indicator for economy (Consumer Spending, GDP Growth, etc.) and at an individual … Continue reading
Has Unemployment Bottomed Out?
Have we hit the bottom? Many people believe we don't start moving forward until we start getting people back to work. 52% of 245 large U.S. employers surveyed in February have already done layoffs and 56% have instituted hiring freezes. Both of these numbers are up from December's numbers of 39% doing layoffs and 47% with hiring freezes. This is according to a Watson Wyatt survey. Now the good news from the survey. Only 13% of companies surveyed are expecting to do more layoffs. This is down from 23% in December. And only 10% are expecting to institute hiring freezes … Continue reading
Latest ACSI Results From The University Of Michigan
The latest American Customer Satisfaction Index results from the University of Michigan were released yesterday. In the E-Commerce sector, Newegg comes out on top, wrestling away the top spot historically held by Amazon, although Amazon's results, while down slightly from last year, nevertheless very impressive. Check out our commentary on the E-Retail, Online Brokerage and Online Travel sites covered by the ACSI Index. Now we all know we are in a tough economy, so does Customer Satisfaction matter in a tough economy? Yes – more then ever. What we have is a hyper-competitive environment where the rising tide that previously … Continue reading
Amazon and Netflix Shine – Satisfaction and Revenue
Amazon announced their fourth quarter results yesterday. Now, remember back when the holiday season was coming to a close…at ForeSee Results we released our Top 40 Holiday Research and I wrote about it in this post, and guess who came out on top…Amazon and Netflix. And not only were they on top, but both had a substantial lead over the next closest pack of retailers. There have been many reports about how tough this holiday season was; Comscore reported that online holiday sales were down 3% year over year. But based on our holiday research, we expected that there would … Continue reading
Shopper Satisfaction Holding Steady During the Holidays
We released our second weekly holiday benchmark this morning. Here's the bad news: satisfaction is still down year over year. But there is a real silver lining, and that is that satisfaction is maintaining from Cyber Monday–it has not fallen off in the week after one of the biggest online shopping days of the year. In fact, purchase intent is higher this week than it was at any point during November. If you're looking for good news in a bleak landscape, this is it! I think all of us watched the good results from Cyber Monday and wondered if that … Continue reading
Posted by Freed Your Mind Blog, Larry Freed
Tagged Customer Satisfaction, E-Retail, Economy, Original Research
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Retail/E-Commerce Trends with Citi Investment Research Group
I had the honor of speaking on a conference call hosted by Citi Investment Research (Mark Mahaney, James Samford and Deborah Weinswig) on Monday. You can see the full note they wrote from the call here. While every holiday season gets watched closely by many people, this holiday season is the most important one I ever remember (except maybe when I was 8 and got a new bicycle). And the Citi Investment Research group is a great group to keep an eye on for their opinions and observations. Share This Post:
Trends in Online Shopping: 2008
We are preparing to do our annual Top 40 Online Retail Satisfaction Index. Here's the way it works in broad strokes: we use the methodology of the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) to assess browser satisfaction with the top 40 retail websites (as determined by Internet Retailer's annual Top 500 Guide) during the holiday shopping season. Each of the 40 retailers is given a score on the ACSI's 100-point scale so you can see which retailers are doing a better or worse job satisfying web browsers during the holiday shopping season. We also do a similar study … Continue reading
More Good News For Website Analytics
More evidence from Jim Sterne's eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit that the down economy isn't negatively impacting members' online marketing budgets or interest and attention to web analytics. 65% of respondents said the state of the economy has no negative impact on their overall online marketing budgets. And while just over a third said it was negatively impacting budgets, only 15% plan to actually cut budgets. More than 80% of respondents have seen increased interest in analytics from senior management within their companies. The report notes that this is usually a pain point for eMetrics attendees, and we certainly see it … Continue reading
What To Do Now (part 2).
About a month ago I shared some thoughts about what a VP of E-Commerce should be doing in these tough economic times. In case you missed that post, the 5 items I listed were: 1. Be aggressive…and smart. 2. Focus on what matters most…your customers.3. Measure what matters most…because you cannot manage what you cannot measure.4. Accuracy, precision, reliability and validity of your measurements is critical to success. 5. Resist the urge to be penny wise and pound foolish. Since then the markets have dropped over 20%, we have seen a huge number of companies announcing layoffs and losses. So. … Continue reading
On My Way To eMetrics
I am excited about participating in this year's eMetrics Marketing Optimization summit in DC (Alexandria to be more precise). There is a great list of speakers: Jim Sterne (Chairman of the Web Analytics Association), Eric Peterson (Web Analytics Demystified and the founder of Web Analytics Wednesdays), Jason Burby (ZAAZ), Alex Langshur (PublicInsite) and many other industry leaders. And there is a great representation of companies presenting including The New York Times, Hewlett Packard, Ameriprise, Home Depot, McAfee, Yahoo! and Nokia, just to name a few. It is an honor to share the podium with such a great list of presenters. … Continue reading
