Shopper marketing blog

What is a "Good" product review rating on a supermarket website?

Posted by Paul on Mar 5, 2019 2:11:35 PM
Paul
Find me on:

As part of our work on delivering Ratings and Reviews for FMCG clients we are often asked “What is a Good Rating?”. To answer this we decided to look at the data on the Sainsbury’s website. What we found surprised us.

We have undertaken an exclusive analysis of the product level shopper Ratings & Reviews on the Sainsburys.co.uk website and found that a few suppliers have led the way with gathering reviews whilst most have done very little. As a result, some categories and brands have thousands of reviews and others just a handful.

What emerges from our analysis is a clear opportunity for nearly all grocery FMCG manufacturers to gain a competitive advantage in their category by giving online grocery shoppers a perspective from their existing consumers.

If you believe in the products you sell, why wouldn't you want your consumers to tell others how great they are?

CheckoutSmart Sainsburys.co.uk reviews infographic Mar 2019

There are over 377,000 reviews & counting
If you are lucky enough to supply products to Sainsburys and have listings on Sainsbury.co.uk, then you know full well that shoppers can leave product Ratings & Reviews on their site. But, did you know that there are nearly 378k reviews on the 19.5k skus listed?

It won't stop there either. With online reviews a hot topic amongst the supermarket ecommerce community that we work with, they are definitely going to be growing going forward.


Who has all the reviews?
Just 3 Sainsbury manufacturers (of the over 1,000 we found on the website) have 89% of the reviews. That’s right, just three of them have over 336,000 reviews between them and one of those is Sainsbury’s themselves. Those well known top marketers Procter & Gamble have 266,578 reviews (71%) alone, which is remarkable:

Table 1 Sainsburys.co.uk Manufacturer reviews ranked by number of reviews for manufacturers with +5 skus listed.

Table 1 Sainsburys.co.uk Manufacturer reviews ranked by number of reviews for manufacturers with +5 skus listed.

You might say “Well P&G etc have an awful lot of skus so they will have more reviews”. Well they do, but the average reviews per sku is just as clearly in their favour. P&G have an average of more than 600 reviews per sku, 7x as many reviews per sku than any other manufacturer. 

Table 2 Sainsburys.co.uk Manufacturer reviews ranked by ave. no. of reviews / sku for manufacturers with +5 skus listed, excludes non-food.

Table 2 Sainsburys.co.uk Manufacturer reviews ranked by ave. no. of reviews / sku for manufacturers with +5 skus listed, excludes non-food.

We believe 600 is way more reviews than you need to make a difference but >20 is a good place to start1. Amazingly, only 4 manufacturers have more than this on average and really only 3 as Upfield is the ex-Unilever spreads business.

This shows a clear opportunity for nearly every manufacturer in the UK to get a competitive advantage in their category by increasing reviews.

 

How do P&G get all their reviews?
Through their SuperSavvyme website (in the US PGEveryDay), where shoppers sign up for coupons on products and then are asked for reviews. They syndicate these reviews on to the Sainsburys site (amongst others). This requires a considerable amount of (global) investment to build and is not a solution that would work for many.

There is no need to go to the trouble of replicating the P&G solution. CheckoutSmart already has a big audience of members that will shop for your products and deliver reviews as part of its Ratings & Reviews Program

Do category ratings vary?
Across all the Ratings by sku, the average is 3.9 stars out of 5.0. There is though great variation by Category, here are the Top 10:

Table 3 Top 10 categories on Sainsburys.co.uk ranked by Ave. ratings / sku for Categories with +5 skus and ave. of +5 reviews / sku.

Table 3 Top 10 categories on Sainsburys.co.uk ranked by Ave. ratings / sku for Categories with +5 skus and ave. of +5 reviews / sku.

The Top Categories have a significant Rating difference to the average of 3.9. Health & Beauty and Household categories are strongly represented, most likely as a result of the core business of those manufacturers who have seriously implemented the collection of Ratings & Reviews to date.


So which categories don’t fare so well?
Some small categories are at the bottom of the pile but some pretty big ones also make the Bottom 10. Who knew Pet Accessories has an average Rating of 3.1 across 63 skus or Kitchen Towel & Tissues 3.2 for that matter?

It is also interesting but perhaps not surprising to note, that Pies, Pastries & Quiches are rated really low regardless whether Frozen or Fresh. These must be an opportunity for brands in these categories to address the concerns of shoppers using review feedback or for higher quality NPD launches.

Table 4 Bottom 10 categories on Sainsburys.co.uk ranked by Ave. ratings / sku for Categories with +5 skus and an ave. of +5 reviews / sku.

Table 4 Bottom 10 categories on Sainsburys.co.uk ranked by Ave. ratings / sku for Categories with +5 skus and an ave. of +5 reviews / sku.


Brands Sainsbury’s shoppers love
Looking at brands with at least 5 reviews (this does seem low to us, but only about half of the 2,000 plus brands have +5 reviews), favourite is FemFresh from Church & Dwight. First for Food is Fage the Greek yogurt brand with an average of 4.9, Spice Tailor is up next up at 4.8.
Table 5 Top 10 Brands on Sainsburys.co.uk ranked by Ave. ratings / sku for Brands with +5  skus and an ave. of +5 reviews / sku (Exc Gen Merch)Table 5 Top 10 Brands on Sainsburys.co.uk ranked by Ave. ratings / sku for Brands with +5  skus and an ave. of +5 reviews / sku (Exc Gen Merch)

Out of politeness we won’t publish the bottom brands here (but you can contact us to find out where you rank), but there are 6 well very well-known brands with an average ranking of less than 3.0 on the same criteria. If this was my brand, it is something I would be taking swift action to address.


Free report on where your brands and Skus are ranked in your category?
We have a full database of all skus, brands & Manufacturers across all categories. We can give any manufacturer a report on where they stand. Contact us to let us know what you are looking for. 
Free report contents will vary by manufacturer and Category.Free report contents will vary by manufacturer and category.

 

If you want more reviews - What can you do right now?
To catch up P&G you could go to the trouble of creating a your own Supersavvyme. That is going to take you a long time and some considerable expense. On the other hand, you could go to Shopper Marketing experts CheckoutSmart who are already the market leaders in grocery mobile coupon delivery and get them to create a group of verified purchasers of your products and get them to leave a review.


If you want to get started collecting Ratings & Reviews, then contact us right away. You could be adding reviews in less than a week on:CheckoutSmart ratings and reviews retailers

 Contact us to know more

If you want to know more, why not read our Blog article about our launch of Easy online grocery reviews.? Then download our Ratings & Reviews Case study or contact us direct to see how we can help you get reviews quickly and make a lasting impact on your online presence and sales.

Get our Ratings & Reviews case study


1. The Value of Online Customer Reviews Georgios Askalidis & Edward C. Malthouse ACM 2016

Copyright Checkout Smart Ltd 2019

Disclaimer: The data and opinions in this article are based on publicly available data sources and are not endorsed or supported by Sainsburys or the brands mentioned. All data collected by CheckoutSmart and shown for illustration purposes only. Although we have done our best to collect and present accurate data, we will accept no liability for actions taken based on the completeness or accuracy of the data contained. Data correct as of Feb 26th 2019.

Topics: Supermarket, Grocery, Rating and Reviews, Sainsburys

Digital Shopper Marketing

FAST & FLEXIBLE

CheckoutSmart is a leading digital shopper marketing agency delivering fast, flexible campaigns against all your goals in any retailer or just one:

  • Online Ratings & Reviews onto Tesco, ASDA, Morrisons, Sainsburys, Waitrose, Ocado etc
  • Supporting your NPD trial and Rate of Sale
  • Saving your sku distribution
  • Digital "On-pack" activities - no pack changes!
  • UK, Europe and beyond

Talk to us here: CONTACT US