Heinz Ranks First in Customer Satisfaction

The overall American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) is stuck in neutral for the third quarter of 2011, unchanged at 75.7 on a 0 to 100-point scale. According to the recently released ACSI report, customer satisfaction in the aggregate is going nowhere—mirroring the economy and contributing to its frailty.

“When there is little or no industry growth, the only way for many companies to expand is to take market share from competition,” notes Claes Fornell, founder of the ACSI and author of The Satisfied Customer: Winners and Losers in the Battle for Buyer Preference. “In an anemic labor market with tight household budgets, this leads to more price competition, deflationary pressure, and a further weakening of aggregate demand. The best defense a company can have against competitive efforts to take market share is to have satisfied customers.”

For the twelfth straight year, Heinz is leading the industry in customer satisfaction with its food products scoring 89%. As a whole, the study's 225+ measured companies average 81%. Results are mixed for individual food manufacturing companies, with even numbers of gainers and losers. Other leaders in customer satisfaction are Mars with a score of 87%, Hershey, Nestlé, and PepsiCo Quaker at 84, ConAgra, Dole, General Mills and Kraft tied for third at 83%.

Sara Lee and Campbell Soup—both down 4% to 82 and 79, respectively—suffer the largest falloff in customer satisfaction. The loss pushes Campbell Soup to the bottom of the industry and into a tie with Tyson and the aggregate of smaller food producers. For Sara Lee, cost is the likely culprit, as consumers encounter prices that average 10% higher on the company’s big-name brands such as Ball Park and Jimmy Dean. Likewise, Campbell has raised its prices in response to cost increases at a time when competing soup labels have held steady.

Customer satisfaction on pet foods has slipped for a second year, down 1.2% to 82. The decline at the industry level is driven by steep drops for Mars Petcare and the aggregate of smaller pet food labels. In 2010, both Mars and the smaller brands led the category at 85. After a 4% drop to 82, small brands tie the industry average, but Mars tumbles a steep 6% to last place with a score of 80. Here again, price plays a key role in depressed satisfaction.

With a 2% gain, Hill’s Pet Nutrition (Colgate-Palmolive) takes over the industry lead at 84%, with Del Monte and Nestlé Purina PetCare at 82%, and Procter & Gamble’s Iams scoring 81%.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index is a national economic indicator of customer evaluations of the quality of products and services available to household consumers in the United States. Data from interviews with approximately 70,000 customers annually are used as inputs into an econometric model to measure satisfaction with more than 225 companies in 47 industries and 10 economic sectors, along with over 200 services, programs, and websites of approximately 130 federal government agencies. The Index was founded at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and is produced by ACSI LLC.