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Fortnum & Mason tops list of world’s top 10 ‘best department stores’

New York, New York, USA - October 10, 2019: Saks Fifth Avenue or Saks & Company on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.; Shutterstock ID 1555449377
Saks Fifth Avenue in New York was one of two U.S. department stores to make the list.

A store that opened in 1707 is still resonating with customers.

Fortnum & Mason which began life as a grocery store founded by an ex-footman to Queen Anne, tops the list of a new study from CouponPi, which analyzed more than 46,000 reviews to uncover the world's best department stores. (See Methodology at end of article.) 

Located in London, Fortnum's (as it is often referred to) is an upmarket department store known for the quality of its food produce. Reviewers described a visit to Fortnum & Mason as an "epicurean adventure," "the nicest shop I've been to in London," and a "tea drinkers’ paradise."

The  study considered department stores around the globe, from KaDeWe in Berlin to Takashimaya Shopping Centre in Singapore. One city did exceptionally well: Three of the top five department stores in the world are in London. Two are in New York City.

Here is CouponPi's list of the world's 10 best department stores (with a final score out of 10 listed for each store).  

  1. Fortnum & Mason, London (10)
  2. El Palacio de Hierro, Mexico City (9.6)
  3. Liberty London. London (9.0)
  4. Arnotts, Dublin (8.9)
  5. Selfridges, London (8.8)
  6. Printemps Haussmann, Paris  (8.7)
  7. Takashimaya Shopping Centre, Singapore (8.6)
  8. Bloomingdale’s, New York City (8.5)
  9. Saks Fifth Avenue, New York City (8.4)
  10. Le Bon Marché, Paris (8.2)
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For more details on the top 10 stores, click here.

 Methodology

To uncover the world's best department stores, CouponPi compiled a list of 50 of the world's most famous department stores. It then discounted the stores with less than 500 Google reviews to ensure it was comparing only the most popular stores.

To create the sentiment analysis score, CouponPi took the average rating of online reviews of the department stores and then counted the number of times words indicating a positive experience were used. 

It normalized the results by creating a scale between 1-10 for both factors. In this case, the store with the most positive average rating (4.6) would score 10, and the store with the lowest average rating (3.7) would score 1. It averaged how each department store performed across the two different data points to create a final index out of 10.

All search volume data was collected via Google's Keyword Planner in October 2024. The regional monthly search volumes were collected for Jan. 1, 2023 - Oct. 31, 2023, and Nov. 1, 2023 - Dec. 31, 2023. The average search volume for these months was then compared to see how much search demand increased during the festive period.

Again, CouponPi then averaged how each place performed across the different data points to create a final index out of 10.

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