Swedish-owned furniture retailer Ikea has topped a recent furniture/electrical store customer satisfaction survey, surpassing JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Norman.
Ikea Australia’s customer satisfaction has gone up 7.4 per cent from a year ago getting a rating of 91.6 per cent in June, according to Roy Morgan’s Furniture/Electrical Store Customer Satisfaction June 2018 survey.
Ikea has overtaken JB Hi-Fi, 2017 Annual Roy Morgan Customer Satisfaction Award winner for the category, now in second at 90.6 per cent, Harvey Norman came in third with 89.4 per cent and The Good Guys came in fourth with 89.2 per cent.
All four leading furniture and electrical retailers increased their customer satisfaction over the last 12 months, however, Ikea’s improvement has outstripped its rivals since mid-2017, Roy Morgan stated.
“Ikea’s victories in the first half of 2018 are the Swedish retailer’s first monthly victories since January 2015 and put Ikea in a good position to end the dominance of JB Hi-Fi and subsidiary The Good Guys in the category,” said Michele Levine, CEO, Roy Morgan.
The survey also showed the overall furniture and electrical store market revealed over 6.1 million Australians shop at a furniture or electrical store in an average four weeks with the market comprising over 3.3 million men compared to around 2.8 million women.
According to the survey, the gender difference is driven primarily by patronage of JB Hi-Fi. JB Hi-Fi is the largest retailer in the category and over 60 per cent of JB Hi-Fi’s customers are men compared to fewer than 40 per cent that are women.
Ikea, however, has nearly 60 per cent female customers compared to just over 40 per cent who are male, the study shows.
There are also clear customer differences depending on age. Ikea and Fantastic Furniture, which are primarily furniture stores, have their strongest markets among those aged 25-34 and 35-49 years old.
Leading electrical retailer JB Hi-Fi also performs strongly in these age groups and is the leading store for those aged under 25 years old. In contrast customers for Harvey Norman and Betta Home Living/ Betta Electrical are far more likely to be aged more than 65 years old than for other stores.
Although the customer base of most stores is skewed towards the larger population centres of the Capital Cities, Betta Home Living/ Betta Electrical stands out with over four-fifths of its customers being based in Australia’s country areas.
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