When it comes to sheer numbers of stores and geographical spread, it’s hard for other supermarket chains to compete with Australia’s two major players, Coles and Woolworths. But there’s more to attracting and keeping customers than simply having lots of stores. You need to provide a positive shopping experience too. 

So which supermarket chains have the most satisfied customers?

We asked more than 3100 supermarket shoppers to tell us what they really think of their supermarket, so we can tell you which are the best – and the worst.

• Our supermarket satisfaction article gives a detailed explanation of how we survey, our scores and results. Read it to better understand more about what shoppers like and don’t like about Australian supermarket chains and supermarket shopping more generally.
• Be the first to know about more free results like these, sign up for our newsletter.
• Click ‘Read more’ below to see at a glance how we survey.

How we survey

We ask shoppers to rate the supermarket(s) where they shop against 19 different criteria (see below) on a 7-point scale ranging from ‘excellent’ to ‘terrible’, and then we convert these numbers to a percentage score. We also ask them to rate their overall shopping experience in their supermarket(s) and we report this as the overall score for customer satisfaction. The scores for individual criteria aren’t incorporated in the overall score. Additionally we ask if they’d recommend their supermarket(s). 

We only include results for supermarket chains that have a minimum 30 completed surveys specific to that chain. We don’t include responses from people who shop in-store in a supermarket less often than once a month. 

A total of 3182 Voice Your Choice members across Australia took part in this survey, which we conducted in February and March 2021.

We asked survey respondents to rate their supermarket for:

• Range of products and brands available 
• Availability of locally produced food products 
• Quality of supermarket’s own brand products 
• Quality of fresh produce 
• Value for money 
• Amount and availability of specials and discounts 
• Stock turnover (food products are within use by and best before dates) 
• Product availability (shelves are stocked with items as labelled) 
• Opening hours 
• Ease of parking 
• Ease of locating items you want 
• Availability of staff when you need assistance 
• Helpfulness of staff (e.g. checkout, refund/exchange, assistance) 
• Ease of use of shopping trolleys/baskets 
• Speed of checkout 
• Availability of your preferred type of checkout (self-service, staff assisted)
• Ease of using self service checkout
• Store appearance and layout 
• Clarity of unit-pricing signage (i.e. price of a product per 100g)