Walmart Is America’s Worst Retailer

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

Quick Read

  • Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT) is not only America’s largest retailer but also its worst according to two widely regarded surveys.

  • Walmart performed poorly on rankings of both customer satisfaction and company reputation.

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Walmart Is America’s Worst Retailer

© Walmart CEO and President on B... (CC BY 2.0) by Walmart

Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT | WMT Price Prediction) is America’s largest retailer, but it is also its worst one according to two widely regarded surveys.

The ACSI Retail and Consumer Shipping Study 2025 is put out by the American Customer Satisfaction Index. That is one of the most widely regarded research firms in the country. Its study is based on 41,850 completed surveys. Customers were chosen at random and contacted via email between January and December 2024. Companies were rated on a scale from 0 to 100.

In the Supermarket category, Walmart finished next to last with a score of 75. The top company was Publix. Its score was 84, and the average across the industry was 79.

Among Online retailers, in the Online Multimarket segment, Walmart ranked last with a score of 75. Amazon ranked first at 83.

Among General Merchandise retailers, in the Hypermarket segment, Walmart ranked last with a score of 73. Target ranked first with a score of 80.

The ACSI Retail and Consumer Shipping Study 2025 examined several categories. These included apps, store hours, selection of merchandise, courtesy, store layout, location, and ease of pickup.

And in the Other Poll

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The 2025 Axios Harris Poll 100 ranks companies by reputation on a scale of 0 to 100. Walmart ranked 81st among 100 companies, with a score of 68.3, dropping two places from last year. Walmart ranked behind retailers Target (68th place), Macy’s (67th), Dollar Tree (78th), Walgreens (65th), CVS (57th), Kroger (35th), and Costco (fifth place).

The Axios study’s methodology included a survey of 6,231 Americans from a nationally representative online sample from January 22 to February 12. It aimed to understand the public’s top-of-mind awareness of companies that either excel or falter in society. Then a list of the 100 most-visible brands in America was deployed in a second online survey to analyze those companies further. The second survey of 16,585 Americans was from a nationally representative sample run from March 6 to 22. Finally, the study asked a third and final set of respondents in separate online surveys about contextual questions on topics related to brands and politics.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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