Consumer Satisfaction and Business Performance

When it comes time to make a big purchase, it can be hard for consumers to know if they’re making the right choices, if the price is worth it, and perhaps most importantly, which brands they can trust. 

ConsumerAffairs researchers spend a lot of time and effort collecting the experiences of other consumers and have arranged them into a series of "buyers guides," such as the one for homeowners.

J.D. Power conducts regular surveys to measure customer satisfaction with certain industries, specifically the brands within those industries. It recently reported that Capital One leads in the banking category.

In its yearly America’s Most Trusted Survey, Lifestory Research asked thousands of consumers across the country to rank their most trusted brands related to products or services for the home over the course of the entire year. The survey included over 500 brands among more than 50 different product categories. 

“The results provide insight into how America’s best brands are seen by consumers in an economic cycle filled with uncertainty,” said Eric Snider, Lifestory Research president. 

Which brands reigned supreme? 

The survey was broken down into several different categories: home builders, household products, household appliances, HVAC, solar, and power, household design, home services, and outdoor products. 

TempurPedic, Sealy, and Serta topped the list of the best mattresses, while Dyson, Shark, and Bissell were the top three rated vacuums of the year. 

In terms of tech, Apple, HP, and Microsoft were the top three computer brands, Roku topped the list of best streaming devices, while Samsung was crowned the most trusted TV brand. 

When looking at household appliances, Whirlpool came out on top for laundry and Bosch took the top spot for kitchen appliances. 

The survey also asked Americans to rank companies and products related to the homebuying process. In this area, Zillow was the number one site for home searching and HomeSmart was most trusted for real estate agents. 

The complete Lifestyle Research survey covers more products and brands, including: furniture stores, specialty home stores, cooking grills, outdoor decking, cabinets, countertops, flooring, and more. 

Click here to see the full survey results. 

You’re going up and down the grocery aisle and pick up an item that has a shelf label showing it’s one price, but when you check out you discover the price is actually higher. It appears to be happening more and more.

A Twitter user named Brandon posted his experience at Whole Foods, suggesting the Amazon-owned chain is ripe for a lawsuit.

“An advertised $1.69 became $1.99 at the register and $3.99 became $4.39 at the register,” he wrote.

Another Twitter user, going by the handle LingCod, complained of “price deception” while shopping at Kroger.

“Not placing items in the correct shelf space, so that you think you are getting one price, only to find out at the register that it is actually much higher,” LingCod wrote. “Time to boycott #Kroger including #FredMeyer stores.”

Home Depot too

The complaint is not limited to supermarket chains. A Home Depot shopper recently complained on Reddit that he found a lawnmower he wanted with a price tag of $999. But that’s not what the mower actually cost.

“Go to self-checkout, scan it, and boom, $1099,” the shopper wrote. “Cancel and go to the register for further assistance and it rings up as $1099. They ask me to take a picture of the display showing $999, so I do. They try to manually mark it down and can’t.”

At first glance, it appears to be a rampant epidemic of deceptive pricing sweeping through American retail. But could there be another explanation? Francois Chaubard, the CEO of Focal Systems, providing retail AI solutions, says inflation and the labor shortage are creating nightmares for retailers.

Inflation’s role

"In higher inflation environments, retailers need to change price tags a lot more often than normal,” Chaubard told ConsumerAffairs. “For example, if the price of a can of Coke needs to change once a year, now it is increasing in price by 1%-2% every month it so needs to be updated 12 times more. 

“However, retailers don’t have enough labor as it is, so tags do not get updated fast enough. Retailers will change the price file, but won’t update the tags, leading to a discrepancy between what is on the shelf and what the customer gets charged.”

Consumer laws may vary by state but there is no federal law that requires a business to honor a price that's wrong on the shelf. If a company can show the pricing error was a mistake, many legal experts say it won’t be considered false advertising.