FREEDyourMind

Fox Rocks the Socks Off of...Just About Everybody

by Eric Feinberg

The release of the American Customer Satisfaction Index on Tuesday was dominated by one finding: people don’t like Facebook. It was covered by virtually every news outlet you can think of, from national newspapers to magazines to television to radio to blogs…it was everywhere.

But the ACSI report didn’t measure only social media sites. It also covered news websites like ABCNews.com, CNN.com, FOXNews.com, MSNBC.com, NYTimes.com, and USAToday.com. The Facebook story was pretty interesting, so I think maybe people didn’t see the big news in news:

FoxNews.com beat the pants off all the other news sites, in almost every imaginable way. 

It was FOXNews.com’s first year being measured in the Index. They got an 82 on the ACSI’s 100-point scale, the highest score any news site has ever received in nine years of measurement by the ACSI. This is huge, right? Especially considering all the grief FOXNews often gets about the slant on their reporting.

Not only did FOXNews.com get the highest ACSI score that any news organization has ever received, it killed the other cable news networks: MSNBC.com got a 74 and CNN.com got a 73 (eight and nine points behind FOXNews.com, respectively). It also killed ABCNews.com, which got a 75. And though FOXNews.com beat out print by a slightly smaller margin, it still killed the print websites that were measured: USAToday.com (77) and NYTimes.com (76). 

Here’s the real kicker: each and every one of those websites improved satisfaction since last year: ABCNews.com has increased almost 6% since last year. And FOX still left everybody in the dust.

 
What other news sites do you want us to measure? Next year, we’re considering HuffingtonPost.com (which actually has more visitors than FOXNews, according to EBizMBA.com). Thoughts? Please post in the comments.

Okay, so now that I have breathlessly heralded the total domination of FOXNews.com in the news and information category, why did it happen? 

• We survey only site users. Before anyone takes a survey, we ask them which news sites they have been to in the last three months. Then they get a survey about that news site. The result is an accurate assessment of customer satisfaction. FOXNews’ survey results reflect how their own users feel about FOXNews.com; MSNBC.com’s survey results reflect how their own users feel about MSNBC.com. Customer satisfaction scores are always a bit higher than general population satisfaction scores about any given website, because they have to have a decent level of satisfaction about the site if they’re already going there. If they hated it, they wouldn’t be going there. Imagine if we surveyed FOXNews.com readers about MSNBC.com and vice versa. The results would have been quite different. In real estate, it’s all about location; in web analytics, it’s all about segmentation. When reliably measuring satisfaction for our clients on a continuous basis, we purposefully take the aggregate insights and then segment them down to the nth segment (by visitor frequency, gender, age, intent, success, and more) so that we can bring clarity to varying satisfaction levels across differing audiences

• FOXNews users spend most of their time with FOXNews: More than two-thirds (63%) of survey respondents (site users) see FOXNews as their primary news source while FOX’s ideological counterpart, MSNBC.com, serves as the primary news source for less than half (49%) of its website visitors, online or offline. The site whose audience was least likely to consider it their primary news source, however, was USAToday.com (39%). Further, FOXNews.com visitors tend to rely solely on FoxNews for all of their news and information (inclusive of the FOXNews TV brand) whereas visitors to other sites tend to seek out multiple sources for news and information. For example, more than half (52%) of FOXNews.com users frequent fewer than two news websites on a regular basis. Compare that with NYTimes.com: only one in three NYTimes.com users looks at two news websites or less on a regular basis.

• FoxNews.com visitors may have lower site expectations: The simple definition of satisfaction is a combination of what you get and what you expect. FoxNews.com visitors’ expectation levels are calibrated by the fact that they visit fewer sites than do other survey respondents. Since they visit fewer sites and thus have less experience with other news and information sites, they could have different and potentially lower expectations. The research also shows that FoxNews.com readers are slightly older, on average, and have lower income and education levels, all of which often correlate with lower expectations, according to our research.

• FoxNews has brand alignment: FoxNews.com seems to have successfully translated the personality of its on-air brand to its website. “Great brands and products must evoke a dynamic personality in order to attract passionate customers,” said Rohit Bhargava, author of Personality not included. I would add to Rohit’s quote “…in any channel at any time.” Whether you agree with the FoxNews worldview or not, it is undeniable that when expectations align with experience, that’s a winning – and satisfying - combination. Think about your business. A tough task for any website, network, company or person is to deliver on your core and key brand attributes in all channels. FoxNews has managed to introduce its corporate personality to its audience in each channel well.

Other thoughts and findings impacting our industry: 

• The 50/50 ad spend screen shifting theory: This study is starting to prove out my long-held belief about TV’s continuing, but loosening, grip on web traffic. We ask the question, “What medium do you prefer most for keeping up with news?” When you tally up personal computer, mobile and tablet access, that total ranges from 22% to 44% (FoxNews.com and CNN.com, respectively). Once that preference shifts to 50% or more across the board, we’ll see the long-awaiting flood of media mix changes that lead to significant online investment away from TV. Our decisions, our lives, our time will be invested more online than on TV and thus we’ll see the ad dollars follow. Follow the money is what they do on Wall Street. Follow the consumer is what they do with ad spend.

 

• Advertising engagement: There is a relationship between visit frequency and likelihood to look at ads on news sites. USAToday.com and ABCNews.com frequent visitors both being more likely to look at ads than CNN frequent visitors. The relationship between visit frequency and ignoring (not paying attention to) ads is less clear. For most of the sites, visit frequency tends to increase the likelihood of clicking on ads. ABCNews.com appears to be better than many of the other sites at generating clicks among visitors who come to the site weekly or more often. For most sites, there is a relationship between visit frequency and ad relevance. This is not the case for CNN, though. Ad relevance is not impacted by visitor frequency. In general, infrequent news site visitors are more likely to perceive ads as interfering their experience than are more frequent visitors.

• Paywalls: NYTimes.com users are most willing to consider paying for content on the site (9% of users would consider paying for content on that site) while only 2% of MSNBC.com users would consider it. Consideration is by no means activation, so let’s keep a close eye on The Times of London and others considering paywalls.

Bottom line: While it’s interesting to talk about the high satisfaction and what caused it, regardless of the cause, FOXNews is sitting on paydirt. Academic studies have shown that high satisfaction as measured by the ACSI leads to more loyalty, recommendations, repeat visits, and more. These kinds of actions translate to dollars for advertisers. After all, as an advertiser, would you rather spend your money on a website with viewers that are loyal, happy, recommenders? It’s great for your brand. 

There’s a whole lot more in the report and in my head. Download the full report at our website and post your comments and feedback below (I’ll respond, I promise). What else did I miss? Why do you think FOX dominated so much, and what does it mean for news and for advertisers? Who should we add to the study next year? Email me anytime to talk more about the content, media and entertainment worlds. Thank you. Be well.

Eric Feinberg is Industry Director for content, media, and entertainment at ForeSee Results. He’s on Twitter at @ericfeinberg and can be reached by email at eric.feinberg@foreseeresults.com. 

The Best and Worst of Facebook

As a follow up to the post I just put up with the latest #ACSI results, Lora Kolodony at TechCrunch gave us the idea to do a word cloud for some of the questions we asked in the survey.

We did some research that was complementary to the ACSI, and we asked people: what do you like best and least about Facebook (and the other companies as well). Here are the results:

What do you like MOST about Facebook? (Grab the Wordle here if you want to use it)

 

What do you like LEAST about Facebook? Grab the Wordle here

What's interesting is that people said "nothing" a lot when asked what they like best and least about Facebook. You can see that what people like best is really the connection. Almost all the words have to do with connection. When it comes to what people like least, the answers are more varied, but the most popular have to do with privacy, functionality, the newsfeed, advertising, navigation, and security.

What do YOU like best and worst about Facebook or any of the other social sites we measured?

Facebook Flops, Google Drops, FoxNews Mops Up the Floor with CNN

So you may have seen by now that the big #ACSI report on e-business was released today (hyperlink to http://www.foreseeresults.com/research-white-papers/ACSI-e-business-report-2010.shtml) with a bang.

We've been doing the analysis for the ACSI since 2002, and there is usually pretty big news in one of the measured e-business categories, but this year, there's a shakeup in all three.

First thing's first: social media. This is the first year the ACSI has measured social media, and what a debut. With an average score of 70, social media has the lowest industry aggregate score of any of online industries measured by the ACSI. Wikipedia leads the social media industry with a score of 77, and YouTube comes in at 73. Industry darling Facebook registers a score of 64, only one point above MySpace (63). Facebook and MySpace have scores so low, the only other companies measured by the ACSI with such low scores are airlines and cable companies. Facebook seems to be suffering from concerns about privacy, frequent changes to the interface, and advertising.

	2010
Social Media Aggregate	70
Wikipedia.com	77
YouTube.com (Google Inc.)	73
All Others	72
Facebook.com	64
MySpace.com (News Corp.)	63

As for News and Information Sites, the big news in this industry is the debut of FoxNews.com at the top of the heap with a score of 82, which is five points above nearest competitor USAToday.com (77) and well ahead of other cable news providers MSNBC (74) and  CNN.com (73). NYTimes comes in at 76. FoxNews registers the highest score ever received by any news organization in the ACSI.Our data shows the high score could be in part because their viewers are very loyal and don't follow as many different news sources as users to the other measured outlets. Therefore, their expectations may be a little lower, which makes them easier to satisfy. But whatever the reason for their high satisfaction, it is off the charts for a news site.  If I were Fox, I’d be using this data in my media kit, because high satisfaction leads to high return visits and loyalty, which means more eyeballs for ads on FoxNews.com.

The Portals and Search Enginescategory is usually a pretty stable in terms of who dominates the field: Google has been at the top every year but this year and in 2007 (when Yahoo slipped momentarily ahead). This year, the "all others" group beats Google, which is a combination of all the other search engines not mentioned by name in this study. This year, they tended to be niche search engines. Google itself had a 7% decline this year (down six points to 80). Bing was measured for the first time this year, and it made a strong first showing with a score of 77, second only to Google.

So what do you think:

• Can Bing actually compete with Google, even with all the power of Microsoft? Last year I would have said no; this year I think Bing might actually have a glimmer of hope.

• Does Facebook's low satisfaction score pose any danger for the company? Or like other perennially low scoring companies like airlines and cable companies, does it have enough of a specialized market that it can dominate despite low satisfaction?

• Why can't the other cable news channels come close to FoxNews.com's high satisfaction score?

I'd love to hear what you think in the comments...

You can download the free report here: http://www.foreseeresults.com/research-white-papers/ACSI-e-business-report-2010.shtmlor catch me on Twitter (@larryfreed) with any questions about the findings.

Citizen Satisfaction with e-Gov Stays Strong

Strong Satisfaction Scores Continue

Across over 100 Federal Government websites and over 330,000 visitor surveys, satisfaction with Federal Government websites registered a score of 75.1 on a scale of 0-100. While this is slightly off last quarters score of 75.2 (an all-time high), this is not a significant difference.  The fact that citizen satisfaction stayed strong is very good news.

Why does it matter if citizens are satisfied with Federal Government websites?  Is there competition?  If you have a bad experience with the IRS.gov are you going to pay your taxes in Canada?  No.  The traditional way we look at competition doesn't apply to Federal Government websites.  Yet, citizen satisfaction is very important for many reasons.

Channel Competition

One of the main reasons satisfaction with Federal Government websites is important is that the web is one of many channels that citizens can use to get information from the government, perform transactions with the government and communicate with the government.  It is also one of the most efficient ways to accomplish those tasks.  To service the next 10,000 citizens who need information on the Swine Flu from CDC, want to apply for Social Security benefits, get information on Medicare Prescription Drug plans, check out the latest happenings at NASA, investigate our National Parks or do research on a medical condition at Medlineplus, the web provides the most cost effective and efficient way to do so.  Think about trying to accomplish those tasks in a call center or a branch office -- expensive and inefficient.  Citizens will use the channel that provides them the best experience.  So the web is competing with the other channels, we call that Channel Competition.  And the reward for winning the competition?  Lower cost to provide information and services.  A true win-win.  Citizens get more information and services that is more accessible.  And Government is able to provide that information and services at a lower cost.  Which is not only a win for Government but also for us taxpayers.  I guess that makes it a win-win-win.

Highlights

Some highlights from the results include strong scores from many agency websites.  Social Security had two sites that score a 90 on a scale of 0 to 100, the Retirement Estimator (www.ssa.gov/estimator) and Social Security iClaim (www.socialsecruity.gov/applyonline) sites.  These scores are incredible.  To put it in perspective, Amazon and Google scored 86 the last time their ACSI scores were published.  Is Social Security site better than Amazon and Google?  And by better we mean, more functions, better look and feel, more usable, better site performance, etc.  Most experts and everyday citizens would not claim that the Social Security sites are "better" than Amazon and Google, but compared to their expectations they are.  The simple definition of satisfaction is a combination of what you get and what you expect.

In total, 27% of the sites measured scored 80 or higher.  80 is considered the threshold for a top performing site.  Now these sites can not rest on their past success.  As a result of their strong performance and the strong performance of many private sector sites, the standard that visitors will hold these sites to will continue to increase.  And for those sites that were not in the top echelon, they are taking the all important first step to improvement, which is measuring where you are today.  You cannot manage what you do not measure.  

The Satisfied Citizen

We define the satisfied citizen as those citizens who had a satisfaction score of 80 or higher for the e-Gov site they were visiting.  The dissatisfied citizen had a satisfaction of 69 or below.  The impact of satisfying citizens is huge.  The satisfied citizen is 80% more likely to use the the site as a primary resource, 79% more likely to recommend the site to others and 52% more likely to return to the site when compared to a dissatisfied citizen.  The satisfied citizen is also 50% more likely to participate in government and 54% more likely to trust government.

The Full Report

You can find all the details of the report by downloading our commentary on the results or email me and I will send you a copy. 

American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) Q4 Results Released Today

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) Q4 results were released today.  The ACSI was founded at The University of Michigan in 1994 and is the leading measurement of Customer Satisfaction in the world.  And while others may make up acronyms and new gimmicks to try to measure consumer satisfaction, the ACSI is the only measurement that has the financial evidence behind it that proves its accuracy, reliability and precision.  And the only methodology that stands up to peer review and has the respect of Economists and Researchers around the world.

Fourth Quarter ACSI Results:  The fourth quarter results cover some very important sectors: Retail, Finance and E-Commerce.  Overall, the ACSI dipped by 0.1% to a 75.9, just 0.2 off its all time high and 0.2 above the Q4 2008 results.  Very impressive results considering the still difficult economy.  These results do not hurt the economic outlook and give us confidence that the economic recovery has a very good chance of continuing on its current pace. 

E-Commerce Key Findings (for the full report check out www.ForeSeeResults.com )

• Satisfaction with e-commerce is up nearly 2% since last year to 81.4.
• The increase in the overall e-commerce sector score is clearly driven by the rebounding online brokerage industry, up 5.4% to 78, with Fidelity and Charles Schwab sharing the top spot with a score of 79.
• The e-retail industry, always the strongest within the e-commerce sector, gains one point to a score of 82 and Netflix takes the top spot.
• The online travel industry ties its all time high aggregate score of 77, not seen since 2005.  Expedia holds the top spot.

Retail Sector: Customer Satisfaction with the retail sector, which includes department and discount stores, specialty retail stores, supermarkets, health and personal care stores and gas stations rose 1.3% to a score of 76.2.  Department and discount stores climbed 1.4% to an ACSI score of 75.  Some notable results include Target up 4% to a score of 80.  Specialty retailers rose 1.3% to a score of 77, with Barnes & Noble leading the way with a score of 84. Supermarkets remained unchanged with Publix continuing to lead the way with score of 86, up 5%.

Finance & Insurance:  This sector improved 1.4% to a score of 77.1, with Banks coming in with a score of 75 and Credit Unions registering 84.  Life Insurance rose 1.3% to 79, Health Insurance went up 2.7% to 75 and Property & Casualty Insurance dropped 1.2% to a score of 80.

You can find out more about the American Customer Satisfaction Index at www.ForeSeeResults.com and TheACSI.org

Summary

So, why is Customer Satisfaction important?  Well, as a leading economic index, the ACSI is unmatched.  And for individual companies an accurate measurement of customer satisfaction can give you the intelligence you need to make the right decisions to optimize your investments.  Consumers go where they are satisfied, so to win in the ultra competitive environment we live in today, companies must satisfy their customers or they face the risk of not surviving.

Social Security Website Better Than Amazon, Google and Netflix!

Wow, what a headline.  And it's true.  At least from user's perspective.  We released the Q4 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) E-Government Satisfaction Index this week and the results were very good. 

Across over 100 Federal Government websites and over 250,000 visitors surveys, satisfaction with Federal Government websites registered a score of 75.2 on a scale of 0-100.  Equaling the highest score ever registered by the ACSI E-Gov Index last quarter.

But more impressive then that was 27% of the sites measured scored 80 or higher with the Social Security Retirement Estimator (www.ssa.gov/estimator) and Social Security iClaim online benefits application(www.socialsecurity.gov/applyonline) both scored 90.  To put that in perspective, in the last published ACSI results covering the e-business and e-commerce sectors included Amazon at 86, Google at 86 and Netflix at 85.

You can download the full report here or email me and I will send you a copy.

So does that mean the Social Security site is better than Amazon's, easier to use than Google's, has more functionality then Netflix?  Not necessarily.  But more importantly it means that visitors to the site are having a better experience and are more satisfied with the experience on the Social Security site.  The site is doing a better job compared to their expectations.

Now, I hear other self proclaimed experts go on and on about what sites are the best based on their personal opinion.  Not to say their opinion is worthless, but it is worth no more than any other site visitor.  In fact, most "experts" are not "normal" visitors.  Listen to your site visitors, measure their satisfaction and know their expectations.

Congratulations to the folks at the Social Security Administration and the rest of the sites that scored 80 and above, the threshold for a great performing site.

Satisfaction Down on Cyber Monday

Our first 2009 holiday benchmark shows some cause for concern: online satisfaction with e-retail on Cyber Monday is at its lowest level in four years.

Why is this troubling? Because the ACSI methodology used to conduct the survey predicts future financial success and links satisfaction to likelihood to purchase online and offline. I'm seeing online retail forecasts ranging a 3% increase to an 8% increase, with a few outliers suggesting higher or lower.

We know sales were up on Cyber Monday--higher than last year and higher than Black Friday. But satisfaction was down. Does this mean people are buying early to take advantage of discounts, or do you think we'll see a strong and robust online holiday shopping season? 

Are Healthcare Websites Sick?

As the debate on healthcare continues, we decided to look at the healthcare websites that we measure at ForeSee Results and see how they are meeting the needs of consumers.  You can download the full report here.

Why look at consumer satisfaction of healthcare sites?  Well, as the debate goes on, one thing is certain, healthcare costs a lot of money.  And one way to reduce and manage some of those costs is better use of technology, for example, improving the quality and effectiveness of the healthcare websites.  The web brings us the opportunity of a win-win that is rarely available in other channels.  The first win is providing more information to citizens when they need it, anytime from anywhere you can get to the internet.  More information that is more readily available to consumers is a big win for consumers.  The second win is cost.  By providing more information, be it educational information about symptoms of a disease, potential side effects of a drug, information about the services provide by a hospital or information about deductibles and co-pays of your health insurance, we can lower the cost of providing the information to consumers.  A more informed consumer will make better health care decisions and lower the total cost of the servicing of that consumer.  A win - win!

So, how did the healthcare sites we measured do.  First of all, we surveyed more then  40,000 consumers who visited these healthcare sites in October and we utilized the proven methodology of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) that was founded at The University of Michigan to measure the consumers satisfaction with the websites and how it would impact the consumer's future behavior.  We segmented the sites into four categories and their satisfaction scores are as follows:

• Government Health Information Sites     79
• Pharmaceutical Sites                           78
• Hospital Sites                                      73
• Health Insurance Sites                          64

The aggregate across all sites was 75.  To put these numbers in comparison, we look at 80 as the threshold for a very good site.  On average, the over 700 sites measured everyday by ForeSee Results, resulting in over 1 million completed surveys per month, score a 72, 4% below the healthcare index.  Not bad! 

The sites measured were wide ranging in their success to date, with scores as low as 42 and as high as 86.  86 is the same score that web leaders Amazon and Google obtained in their most recent published ACSI report.  Very impressive results from some of these healthcare sites.

I applaud all the sites (even the ones scoring in the 40's) because the first step to improvement is to measure.  You cannot manage what you do not measure.  And if you don't measure it you won't know if you improved.  So those low scoring sites are at the beginning of a journey that is bound to take them nowhere but up.

So, does satisfaction really matter for these sites?  Well, we talked about the win-win earlier, but lets take another perspective on it.  When we looked across those 40,000 consumers surveyed in October on these healthcare sites, we see that there is huge payback for high satisfaction.  When we look at the consumers who scored 80 or higher and compare them to those that scored 69 or lower, across all the sites, we see that the highly satisfied consumer is:

• 139% more likely to return to the website
• 169% more likely to recommend the website to others
• 153% more likely to use the website as a primary resource for interacting with the healthcare organization

This is truly a huge payback for satisfying your customers and results in the win-win, more information and services at a lower cost.

Holiday Predictions

Well, Thanksgiving dinner is over and as I sit here, after having eaten way too much Turkey and way too many deserts, it is time to ponder the online holiday season that is just minutes away from kicking off.  Actually, it seems in many ways it has already started.  Things used to be simple...and defined.  We had Black Friday and Cyber Monday.  But now, many retailers have turned this week into "black Friday week" with aggressive discounts all week long.  I remember reading an article a while back where many prominent retailers said there wasn't going to be the deep discounting that we have seen during prior holidays.  We will see if they can hold out.  From the looks of things so far, I doubt it.

All of us that work in and around e-retail are being asked about our predictions for 2009 holiday sales online. Here are my predictions.

Overall, I’m cautiously optimistic and think sales will be up. And I say that for a few reasons.

1. Everyone’s being a lot smarter about inventory, and e-retailers always have a leg up when it comes to inventory because they can leverage so many different warehouses, while a brick and mortar store has more limited inventory. Those who have bought well will do better both online and offline, but the lack of inventory offline will help online retailers this year.

2. H1N1 paranoia will send more people online to do their shopping. What better way to avoid nasty germs (except for those in your own house or office...and of course those computer viruses) than by shopping online?  That reminds me of a story about my grandmother.  Thanksgiving seems like a good time for a story.  Many years ago, back in the mid to late 80's, when we first started hearing about computer viruses there was a widely publicized computer virus.  At that time I was working in technology at National Bank of Detroit.  My grandmother calls me and is all worried, wondering if I am sick.  She was even ready to bring me some chicken soup.  I told her I wasn't sick, and she said, "but I heard on the news about that awful computer virus and I know you work with computes all day".  Aren't grandmothers great!

3. For the first time last year, we saw price had a big impact on satisfaction. In previous years, it was interesting that that despite e-retailer’s assumption that people cared only about price, there were actually other elements of the online shopping experience that impacted them more. We were able to find this out using the powerful technology of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) and prove it to be true with the data.  But last year, with the recession, we saw that change and price became a key driver of satisfaction. Retailers are jumping on discounting early and they know they need to slash prices to attract customers.

4. Recession fatigue. We’ve been in this recession for more than a year. Those of us that have jobs who have been saving money and watching spending may be tired of being so careful and may be a little more willing to spend money this year.  Maybe some of the pessimism is finally lifting. I wouldn’t say we’re jumping for joy, but maybe we’re hopping for mild excitement.  And what a better time to show that mild excitement then during the holiday season.

5. When we look at years of satisfaction trending data, we see that customers are as satisfied today as they were six months ago and a year ago, after sat took a huge dive last September. Since satisfaction as measured by the ACSI is predictive of online and offline purchases, if satisfaction is keeping steady into a Christmas season, we would expect to see sales go up this holiday season.

So what are your predictions?

Latest American Customer Satisfaction Index Results Released Today

Today the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) released its latest results on customer satisfaction.  You can read the full commentary here.   Covered in this quarter's results are some of my favorites - Beer and Chocolate.  The categories covered in the Manufacturing Nondurable Goods Sector include Apparel, Athletics shoes, Breweries, Cigarettes, Food Manufacturing, Personal Care & Cleaning Products, Pet Food and Soft Drinks.

If you follow the American Customer Satisfaction Index or ForeSee Results, you know that Customer Satisfaction as measured by the ACSI at a macro level is a leading indicator for economy (Consumer Spending, GDP Growth, etc.) and at an individual company level is a leading indicator for financial success.  The ACSI was founded at the University of Michigan.

So, what does the future hold?

Overall, the National ACSI score dipped ever so slightly from 76.1 (the all time high) last quarter to 76.0 this quarter, a very minor 0.1%.  And it is up a significant 1.3% from Q3 2008 when it had a score of 75.0.  The Q2 ACSI results predictive model pointed to an increase of consumer spending of 3.25% , much higher then most others were projecting and actual Q3 consumer spending growth turned out to be 3.35%.  With a flattening of the score this quarter it is projecting consumer spending to be between 2% and 3% in Q4.

Some of the companies that really excelled in these results include Levi Strauss rising 6.4% to a score of 83, Anheuser-Busch rising 3.7% to 85, Mars, Hershey and Nestle all seeing increases between 1.2% and 2.4% with scores between 85 and 87.  So, America is going back to basics - "non-designer" Jeans, Anheuser-Busch and Chocolate!  Not a total surprise, when the economy is tough we tend to gravitate back to what is familiar and what gives us simple pleasures.