M&S has been crowned the best supermarket for shopping in-store with 77% overall customer satisfaction, new research shows.
According to recent data from consumer watchdog, Which?, M&S scored most highly on staff availability and helpfulness, store appearance and the quality of own-label and fresh products.
Discount grocer Aldi and upmarket retailer Waitrose came in at second place, both with a ranking of 73%, with Waitrose scoring five out of five stars on all but two categories with high customer satisfaction across its product range and queing times.
Also looking into supermarket giants Iceland, Lidl, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Asda, Morrisons and Co-op, all scored between 61% and 91%, with Sainsbury’s taking the lead of the traditional Big 4 grocers.
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However, when considering the best supermarket for online shopping, Ocado scored the highest at 81% with particular strengths across its range of products, collection/delivery slot availability and customer service.
Iceland, Waitrose, Tesco and Sainsbury’s scored above 70%, while Morrisons took last place at 66%, receiving just two out of five stars for value for money, stock availability and choice of substance items.
Leading retailer Tesco took top position for the freshest online supermarket when comparing it wish Asda, Ocado, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Waitrose.
Looking at the same 16 perishable food and drink items from each retailer, on average Tesco’s products had 264 hours left and 10.98 days left to use, whereas Waitrose items were found to have 207 hours and 8.63 days in comparison.
Across all supermarkets, the shoppers surveyed admitted the biggest frustrations in-store include long queues at the checkout, not enough staff at the checkouts, shelves not being stocked well and items on offer were being out of stock.
When shopping online, 36% of customers were unhappy with items being unavailable, perishable goods not being fresh or having reasonable shelf life and items being substituted.
