Redwood City, Calif. –  Nov. 22, 2017 – Today Reputation.com released its 2017 Retail Reputation Report, revealing which retailers lead – and which lag – on the aspects of in-store experience most frequently cited by consumers in online reviews, including wait times, quality of service, value, staff competence and other key customer satisfaction factors.

The 2017 Retail Reputation Report gives in-store retailers systematic insights into their strengths and opportunities for improvement, based on consumer reviews on the web — and equips shoppers with useful tips as they head into the holiday shopping season.

Reputation.com applied machine learning and sentiment analysis to more than 400,000 reviews that consumers posted on the web about their in-store shopping experiences at over 8,000 locations owned by 28 marquee retailers nationwide in categories including cosmetics, apparel, athletic gear and home improvement.

Two retail categories – clothing and accessories, as well as toys and hobbies – are expected to command more than 40 percent of holiday gift spending for 2017¹.

The most highly rated retailer in the study? The LEGO Store ranked number one for in-store experience, with over 4.5 stars. In fact, consumers rated LEGO well over 4 stars in eight out of nine categories of shopping experience: value, service, wait times, cleanliness, convenience, product availability, staff competence, and parking, facilities and amenities (with a perfect 5.0).

Not all toy stores are created equal, though. While toy and baby stores earned four of the top ten slots in the study, the heritage toy retailer Toys“R”Us was ranked far lower when it came to overall shoppers’ satisfaction score, at No. 23.

Among apparel retailers, Athleta (by Gap) led with 4.39 stars overall, due largely to consumers’ ratings of its staff, product availability, parking, facilities and amenities. Lululemon (4.38) and Nordstrom (4.32) were close behind, largely due to their teams’ abilities, though they got more complaints about wait times. And while Hugo Boss (3.63) did extremely well on staff competence, consumers weren’t happy with the stores’ managers.

Stores included in the 2017 Retail Reputation Report include: Athleta, Gymboree, The Home Depot, Justice, Nike, Nordstrom, Sephora, The LEGO Store, Toys”R”Us, TJ Maxx and others.

Click here for access to the complete 2017 Retail Reputation Report.

About Reputation.com

Reputation.com, Inc., based in Silicon Valley, pioneered Online Reputation Management (ORM) technology for the enterprise market in 2006. With its SaaS platform, businesses across the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific gain actionable insights that help them make operational improvements, improve online reputation and drive revenue. Reputation.com technology has managed hundreds of millions of consumer reviews and interactions across hundreds of thousands of online points of presence for global companies spanning 77 industry verticals. www.reputation.com.

¹ Percent of Average Anticipated Gift Spend, Deloitte 2017 Holiday Retail Survey, October 2017
https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/consumer-business/articles/holiday-retail-sales-consumer-survey.html