Myspace drops out; Bing nearly catches Google; Foxnews.com has strong lead
over HuffingtonPost.com
ANN ARBOR, Mich. (July 19, 2011) – The social media market is primed for a
new player that allows users to connect with friends, according to the 2011
American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) E-Business Report, produced in
partnership with customer experience analytics firm ForeSee Results. Despite
a small improvement this year, Facebook (+3% to 66) is the lowest-scoring
site, not only in the social media category, but of all measured companies
in this report. The survey was conducted last month, before the widespread
introduction of Facebook’s biggest competitor, Google+, but Facebook’s low
score indicates that Google+ could easily pounce and gain market share if
they can provide a superior customer experience.
“We don’t know yet how Google+ will fare, but what we do know is that Google
is one of the highest-scoring companies in the ACSI and Facebook is one of
the lowest,” said Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Results. “An
existing dominance of market share like Facebook has is no longer a safety
net for a company that is not providing a superior customer experience.”
Facebook is just one story emerging from today’s report. The ACSI E-Business
Report covers three categories of e-business: social media, portals and
search engines, and online news. This is the twelfth annual report of its
kind, allowing companies and analysts to track the performance of these
organizations over time by a critical metric: customer satisfaction.
Social Media: Wikipedia (+1% to 78) takes the top spot, while YouTube (+1%
to 74) comes in a distant second. MySpace drops from this year’s Index
because there were not enough users to create a statistically significant
sample. Overall, social media is one of the lowest-scoring industries
measured by the ACSI-only airlines, newspapers, and subscription television
services score lower.
Search Engines and Portals: Google leads the search engine and portals
category (up 4% to 83), but Bing follows closely, jumping an impressive 7%
in one year to 82. Anything over 80 is generally considered an excellent
score. Bing has grown in market share over the last year and makes up
roughly 17% of the search engine market, up from 9% last year.
“While Google+ is the challenger to Facebook’s established dominance in the
social media sphere, in the search engine wars, Google is king and Bing is
hoping to be a contender,” added Freed. “Last year, Google’s customer
satisfaction score was three points higher than Bing’s. This year, that gap
narrows to one point. Bing is showing it can challenge Google in terms of
revenue, market share, and the customer experience.”
News Websites: FoxNews.com (82) has a strong lead on the news and
information category and is five points ahead of the next highest-scoring
site, ABCNews.com (+3% to 77). HuffingtonPost.com (69) debuts at the bottom
of the industry. Satisfaction with NYTimes.com drops 4%this year to 73. The
study was conducted during the same time the site began to implement their
metered paywall, but it remains to be seen whether satisfaction will rebound
as customers adjust to the new business model.
E-business is still relatively immature in many ways, often more interested
in technology than in satisfying customers,” said Claes Fornell, founder of
the ACSI and author of The Satisfied Customer. “As competition gets tougher,
this likely to change, and the successful companies are going to have
powerful cause-and-effect customer satisfaction measurement systems. The
losers will be the companies that underestimate the power of a dissatisfied
customer and fail to upgrade their current measurement systems.”
For more analysis and complete historical scores, please visit
www.theacsi.org or www.ForeSeeResults.com.
About the ACSI
The American Customer Satisfaction Index is a national economic indicator of
customer evaluations of the quality of products and services available to
household consumers in the United States. Data from interviews with
approximately 70,000 customers annually are used as inputs into an
econometric model to measure satisfaction with more than 225 companies in 47
industries and 10 economic sectors, as well as more than 130 federal
government departments, agencies, and websites. Results are released on a
monthly basis with all measures reported using a 0-100 scale. ACSI data have
proven to be strongly related to a number of essential indicators of micro
and macroeconomic performance. For example, firms with higher levels of
customer satisfaction tend to have higher earnings and stock returns
relative to competitors. Stock portfolios based on companies that show
strong performance in ACSI deliver excess returns in up-markets as well as
down-markets. And, at the macro level, customer satisfaction has been shown
to be predictive of both consumer spending and gross domestic product
growth.
Founded at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, the Index
is produced by ACSI LLC and supported in part by ForeSee Results, corporate
sponsor for the e-commerce and e-business measurements.
About ForeSee Results
As the leader in customer satisfaction measurement, ForeSee Results captures
and analyzes voice-of-customer data to help organizations increase loyalty,
recommendations and marketing value. Using the methodology of the American
Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), ForeSee Results identifies improvements
across all channels and touch points that drive customer satisfaction. With
over 60 million survey responses collected to date and benchmarks across
dozens of industries, ForeSee Results offers unparalleled expertise in
customer satisfaction measurement and management for clients around the
world.
ForeSee Results, a privately held company, is located in Ann Arbor, Michigan
and on the web at www.ForeSeeResults.com. Connect with ForeSee Results at
(www.ForeSeeResults.com/connect.html).
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