CHICAGO, IL - How do you determine shoppers’ favorite grocery stores? Is it by price? Is it by convenience? Is it by quality? I could go on, but a recent study by dunnhumby suggests that all these factors and more must be taken into account to accurately rank consumers’ favorite retailers. What sounds like a no-brainer is a unique and exhaustive study measuring customer preference by a Retailer Price Index (RPI). It looks like the code for favorite grocery store has been cracked!

The RPI rankings are the result of a statistical model that predicts how retailer execution on various consumer needs impact emotional bonds and financial success. Data for the statistical model was gathered from publicly available financial data and a customized, online survey of around 7,000 households. The statistical model addressed financial measures of size (grocery market share), efficiency (grocery sales per square foot), and recent growth (grocery sales growth), as well as emotional measures of trust, intensity of attachment, satisfactions, and recommendation. These measured criteria create a different way to look at retail preference.According to the study, “The main differentiator between our approach and other approaches to rank retailers is that our ranking results from a combination of financial success, emotional bond, and performance on preference drivers. Other lists typically produce simple ranks of retailers on just one of these dimensions. The result of using only one of these dimensions is that the industry has conflicting accounts of which retailer is ‘best,’ and those lists often don’t associate what retailers do (preference drivers) with resulting emotional connections and financial performance.”

The study focuses on determining how shoppers prioritize needs, coming up with several “pillars” of emotional bond and financial performance. These pillars include: perceived prices (lower than the competition); quality (right items, clean store, etc.); digital access (simple and easy ways to shop online); operations (out-of-stocks and pricing consistency); convenience (location, one-stop-shop-ability); discounts and rewards; and speed (get in and out quickly)

Taking all factors into account, dunnhumby came up with the following rankings for top grocer:

1. Trader Joe’s
2. Costco
3. Amazon
4. H-E-B
5. Wegmans
6. Market Basket
7. Sam’s Club
8. Sprouts Farmers Markets
9. WinCo Foods
10. Walmart
11. Aldi
12. Peapod
13. The Fresh Market

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