Soft Drink, Beer Brands Rank High in Consumer Satisfaction

ANN ARBOR, Mich.A new report from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) reveals U.S. consumers are relatively satisfied with soft drink and beer brands despite a decline in overall U.S. sales.

Overall, consumers are upbeat about their favorite soft drink brands, as the ACSI score for the industry ticks up 1.2% to 85 (on a 0 to 100 scale) and ties electronics (televisions and disc players) as the highest scoring among 47 measured industries.

A wide variety of product offerings, product reliability, low unit price, and minimal buyer switching costs keep customers highly satisfied with their soft drinks," said Claes Fornell, founder of the ACSI and author of The Satisfied Customer: Winners and Losers in the Battle for Buyer Preference. Add to this the fact that purchasing and consuming these products hardly requires any customer service assistance, and soft drinks come out on top."

The industry's score is strengthened by small gains for the two cola giantsCoca-Cola and PepsiCo improve 1% each to share the lead at 85as well as a big boost for the category of smaller brands (store brands plus labels such as Faygo and Shasta). Following last year's 7% drop to 79, customer satisfaction with smaller brands rose 5% to 83. Dr Pepper Snapple Groups score dropped to 82, down 4% from an industry-leading 85 in 2010. The report noted customers are becoming more sensitive to price at a time when the company has raised prices.

Customer satisfaction with breweries is stable at 82 for a second year. Two years ago, the industry hit a high point of 84, but a sizeable downturn for market-share leader Anheuser-Busch InBev dampened customer satisfaction overall in 2010. This year, Miller took the lead at 84 (+1%), edging out the aggregate of all smaller brands (Corona, Heineken, Samuel Adams and assorted microbrewery labels) at 83 (unchanged). A-B held steady (-1% to 81), but anchors the low end along with Molson Coors (unchanged).

Beer customers tend to be more sensitive to price than those buying soft drinks," Fornell said.

Consumption of beer is also less than half of the consumption of soft drinks, which makes customer satisfaction more important for this industry."