New customer satisfaction data released by Roy Morgan last week has seen Aldi retain their lead in the approval stakes, however Coles has now surged past IGA and Woolworths.

The release, related to the month of May, showed customer affection for Aldi and Coles had risen from April levels while IGA and Woolworths both recorded declines. Coles’ positioning as second in the survey represents the first time the chain has surpassed the rating of IGA and Woolworths for over a year.

“Satisfaction amongst Coles’ customers has been steadily improving since November 2008, with the latest results showing Coles satisfaction to be higher than that of Woolworths and IGA. More importantly Coles satisfaction is the highest seen since June 2007,” Michele Levine, CEO, Roy Morgan Research, said. “Aldi still leads in supermarket satisfaction, with a marginal recovery in the May satisfaction score, positioning Aldi 3.8% above that of Coles.”

“IGA’s customer satisfaction has been consistently falling, with a 2 percentage point drop in as many months and a total of 2.7% since Dec ‘08. Although less severe than IGA, Woolworths have also had two consecutive months of decline in satisfaction on the back of a recent recovery in satisfaction to March ’09.”

Among Aldi customers, 89.4% were very or fairly satisfied with the supermarket, followed by Coles’ customers (85.6%), IGA (84.8%) and Woolworths (84.7%) in the 6 months average to May 09. All four remain below their rating from five years ago when Aldi had 93.7% approval followed by Woolworths (89.6%) and IGA and Coles (88.7%), according to the Roy Morgan Supermarket Satisfaction Report.

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