The best retailer in South Africa according to shoppers: Woolies vs Checkers vs Pick n Pay

Social media analytics company DataEQ has published its Retailer Sentiment Index for South Africa, which tracks and measures how consumers feel about the country’s biggest retail brands.

The group tracked and assessed over 1.8 million social media posts relating to retailers and categorised them as either positive or negative, which was then processed to determine a net sentiment score for each brand.

The posts cover the period 1 January to 31 December 2023.

The brands tracked include Woolworths, Pick n Pay, Spar, Checkers and Shoprite. The table below outlines their performance in each category.

Woolworths retained its position as the top retailer in the country, with a net sentiment score of 19.5%. This is far higher than any other retail brand and is up 0.3 percentage points from the previous ranking.

In the 2022/23 ranking, the full list of retailers was not shown – however, the new index has now revealed where the other tracked retailers appear on the list.

Shoprite ranks as the second-best retailer in the country, having gained 6.2 percentage points on the Index. In 2022/23, Food Lover’s Market was ranked second, but the group was not tracked in the in 2023/24 list.

Pick n Pay showed the biggest jump, moving from stone last in 2022/23 to third position in 2023/24, having gained 9.8 percentage points in the index.

Checkers and SPAR were ranked at the bottom, with the same net sentiment score – although Checkers stood out as having gained 4.2 percentage points versus SPAR’s 1.7 percentage points.

Breaking the index into categories, Woolworths remained the top-ranked retailer when it came operational sentiment (tracking shoppers’ experience with the brand’s products and services) as well as reputational sentiment (conversations not related to products and services).

It also came out on top for its house brands, where sentiments around quality and taste outperformed the rest.

However, when looking at pricing, customer service and online deliveries, Shoprite and Checkers came out on top.

“All retailers, except Checkers, experienced declining Net Sentiment towards pricing,” DataEQ said.

The previous top performer, Woolworths, saw the most notable decline, dropping to third place in this category.

All retailers had negative Net Sentiment towards customer service, with issues around turnaround time and staff conduct emerging as the biggest complaint drivers.

Checkers saw the least negative sentiment for customer service, having shown major improvements
in turnaround time and response rates. This was largely linked to improved experiences on the Sixty60
delivery app.

Pick n Pay was the lowest-performing retailer when it came to customer service and they saw the highest proportion of complaints for turnaround time, staff competency, refunds/returns and no response received.

“Many of these complaints were in relation to Pick n Pay’s delivery app, ASAP!, which negatively impacted customers’ overall perceptions,” the group said.

With the shift to deliveries in South Africa, apps like Checekrs Sixty60, ASAP!, SPAR2U and Woolies Dash have become key indicators of sentiment.

All delivery apps except ASAP! had a net positive sentiment score among South African shoppers, with Woolies Dash emerging as the most positive. However, in terms of conversation, more people are talking about Checkers Sixty60 than any other.

Like the retail stores, however, customer service on the delivery apps needs a lot of work, DataEQ said, with none of the apps scoring positive sentiment on this metric.

The biggest customer service complaints related to delivery concern turnaround time, followed by refunds, returns or exchanges, and staff competency.

The biggest complaints around the deliveries themselves relate to items missing from the order.

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