Walmart Hammered in New Quality Study

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jan 27, 9:15AM EST

24/7 Wall St. Key Points

Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT) ranked poorly in a new American Customer Satisfaction Survey.
When it comes to earnings, though, Walmart stands out.

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Walmart Hammered in New Quality Study — © TaraPatta / Shutterstock.com

Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT | WMT Price Prediction) may be the largest company in America, based on the Fortune 500. It may also be the largest employer with 1.6 million workers. According to a new study, it is also the worst from the standpoint of consumers.

The new American Customer Satisfaction Survey rates hundreds of companies in dozens of categories. Its latest study is its Retail and Consumer Shipping Study 2026. In all the studies, regardless of category, companies received ratings of zero to 100. This latest study is based on 31,293 completed surveys. Customers were chosen at random and contacted via email between January and December 2025.

Among General Merchandise Retailers, Walmart ranks last in the category of Hypermarkets with a score of 76. Ahead of it were Fred Meyer (Kroger) with a score of 82, Meijer with a score of 81, and Target with a score of 78. Walmart’s score did increase 4% from 2025. The General Merchandise Retailers category was based on several metrics. These included mobile app, ease of pickup process, convenience of store hours, website satisfaction, store location, store credit cards, ability to provide brand names, courtesy of staff, and speed of checkout.

Among Online Retailers, Walmart was in the middle of the pack in the Online Multimarket category with a score of 77. The category leader was Amazon, with a score of 82. The major metrics of this category were quality of mobile app, reliability of app, ease of navigation, delivery speed, availability of merchandise, variety of shopping options, ease of returns, and help in customer support, among other things.

In the Supermarket category, among 19 retailers, Walmart ranked 17th with a score of 75. The leader in this category was Trader Joe’s with a score of 86. Among the key metrics for this category were store hours, convenience of pickup, website satisfaction, accuracy of orders, layout and cleanliness of store, variety and selection of merchandise, and quality and freshness of meat and produce.

One place Walmart excels and runs against the grain of the study findings is its earnings. The study concludes, “Customer satisfaction is a driving force that impacts the financial outlook of individual firms and the health of the U.S. economy at large.” Walmart does too well financially for that to be true.

The Real Winner From Latin America’s Retail Boom

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.