Survey: Target generates most positive grocery sentiment

Cambridge, Mass. – Target is the grocery brand with the highest positive consumer sentiment rating. In a survey of the grocery habits of 763 consumers exclusively released to Chain Store Age, analytics technology provider Luminoso Technologies found that 60% of consumers had positive sentiment about Target as a grocery retailer.



Other grocery retailers with positive sentiment of more than 50% included Publix, Harris-Teeter, Safeway and Kroger. Shoprite was the most associated with convenience, Target was the most correlated with discussion surrounding pricing.



Sentiment analysis of grocery-related keywords also shows that people feel very strongly that they should have good “produce,” “seafood,” and “organic” products, while the “pharmacy” could use improvement. People are far less emotional about staples such as “bread”, “snacks”, and “milk.” People select grocery stores for their “selection,” favorite “brands,” and “variety,” while looking for improvement in the “checkout,” “carts,” and “aisles.”



Importance of price increased with respondents’ residential population density, and convenience had a slight premium for urban residents. Location was significantly more important to rural (24%) and urban (31%) respondents, as compared to suburb-dwellers (15%).



Looking at gender differences, men were slightly more likely to discuss location as a store selection factor (28% for men, 19% for women). Men were almost three times as likely to discuss what their stores could improve (34% to 12%).