For a retailer that sells everything from groceries and electronics to furniture and tires, speed and convenience can matter almost as much as the merchandise itself. In the latest major U.S. customer satisfaction benchmark for general merchandise retailers, Sam’s Club finished at the top.

The Walmart-owned warehouse club received an American Customer Satisfaction Index score of 83 out of 100 in the ACSI Retail and Consumer Shipping Study 2026. That was the highest score among the individual general merchandise retailers included in the study.

The result makes Sam’s Club America’s highest-rated general merchandise retailer in the ACSI’s 2026 assessment. But the distinction is specific. The ranking measures customer satisfaction, not sales, market share, prices, financial performance, or an overall judgment of which retailer is best.

The ACSI general merchandise category brings together several types of large retailers. Its 2026 results cover 15 major companies, along with an aggregate representing smaller retailers, and divide the named companies into department stores, discount stores, hypermarkets, and warehouse clubs.

Sam’s Club, classified as a warehouse club, scored 83. Fred Meyer, the Kroger-owned hypermarket chain, followed at 82. Costco, Meijer, and TJX, which represents Marshalls and TJ Maxx, each received a score of 81.

Among other major retailers, Macy’s and BJ’s Wholesale Club scored 80, Kohl’s scored 79, Target scored 78, and Walmart scored 76. The overall general merchandise industry score was 79, up from 78 in the previous study.

The ACSI also reports an “All Others” score of 82. That figure represents an aggregate of smaller companies rather than a single retailer, so it should not be treated as an individual company competing with Sam’s Club for the top position.

The year attached to the ranking requires some explanation. The 2026 ACSI results are based on surveys conducted from January through December 2025, with the study published on January 27, 2026. The ranking therefore reflects customer experiences reported during 2025 rather than transactions occurring throughout calendar 2026.

The broader Retail and Consumer Shipping Study was based on 31,293 completed surveys across the industries it examined. Customers were chosen at random and contacted by email. They were asked to evaluate recent experiences with large companies selected primarily on the basis of market share, as well as smaller companies grouped into an “all other” category.

Importantly, the 31,293 figure covers the overall study, which also includes specialty retailers, online retailers, supermarkets, gas stations and consumer shipping. It is not the number of respondents for general merchandise retailers alone.

ACSI converts survey responses into an index ranging from 0 to 100. Its econometric model uses measures including customer expectations, perceptions of quality, and perceptions of value to estimate customer satisfaction. The model also connects satisfaction with measured outcomes such as customer complaints and loyalty.

That makes an ACSI score different from a simple five-star review average or an online popularity ranking.

Sam’s Club did not improve its score in the latest study. Its rating actually declined 2 percent from 85 in the 2025 ACSI results to 83 in 2026. Even after that decline, it remained ahead of every other named company in the general merchandise category.

Its position therefore reflects continued relative strength rather than a year of rising satisfaction.

The gap at the top also narrowed. Fred Meyer jumped 9 percent from 75 to 82, putting it only one point behind Sam’s Club. Meijer rose 7 percent to 81, while BJ’s Wholesale Club increased 3 percent to 80.

Meanwhile, Costco slipped from 82 to 81 and TJX moved from 82 to 81. Target declined from 80 to 78.

Those movements illustrate why the ranking is best viewed as a current customer satisfaction benchmark rather than a permanent hierarchy among retailers.

ACSI attributed Sam’s Club’s continued lead in part to efficiency, an area in which the warehouse club has spent years developing technology designed to reduce friction during a shopping trip.

The pattern extends beyond Sam’s Club. Across general merchandise retailers, ACSI recorded improvements in several measures associated with digital shopping and store pickup.

Mobile app quality and reliability both reached 86, making them the highest-scoring customer experience measures for the category. Ease of the pickup process increased to 85, while accuracy of order fulfillment for pickup reached 84. Website satisfaction also rose to 84.

Other measures improved as well. Courtesy and helpfulness of staff reached 81, merchandise availability rose to 80, and satisfaction with checkout speed increased to 79. Frequency of sales and promotions rose to 78.

The results suggest that satisfaction with a large retailer increasingly involves more than what is sitting on the shelves. Customers are also evaluating how easily they can find, order, collect and pay for those products.

Sam’s Club’s own technology strategy closely matches several of the areas measured by ACSI.

Its Scan & Go service allows members to scan merchandise with the Sam’s Club mobile app, pay on their phones and bypass a conventional checkout line. The company first introduced Scan & Go as a standalone app in 2016 before incorporating it into the main Sam’s Club app in 2018.

The retailer has also deployed technology that uses computer vision to verify purchases as shoppers leave clubs, reducing the need for traditional receipt checks. By April 2024, Sam’s Club said the technology had reached more than 120 locations.

At Walmart’s 2025 investment community meeting, Sam’s Club said three-quarters of its members were leaving clubs without stopping in line through its Just Go exit technology. It also reported a Net Promoter Score above 90 for Scan & Go.

Those company-reported figures should not be confused with the ACSI score. Net Promoter Score and the American Customer Satisfaction Index use different methodologies and scales, so they are not directly comparable. They do, however, provide additional evidence that Sam’s Club has made checkout and exit convenience a significant part of its operating strategy.

Sam’s Club has also been investing beyond checkout. In 2025, the company said enhancements such as free shipping for Plus members and free curbside pickup for Club members had contributed to record levels of digital penetration and first-year membership renewal. It also said its Member’s Mark private brand accounted for roughly half of merchandise sales growth over the preceding two years.

Sam’s Club’s result also sits within a broader pattern of relatively high satisfaction among warehouse clubs.

In the 2026 general merchandise results, all three named warehouse clubs scored at least 80. Sam’s Club led with 83, Costco scored 81, and BJ’s Wholesale Club reached 80.

The ACSI noted that store brands continued to support strong satisfaction at Costco and BJ’s, while Sam’s Club benefited from efficiency.

Still, warehouse clubs did not dominate every comparison. Fred Meyer’s score of 82 placed the hypermarket just behind Sam’s Club, and both Meijer and TJX matched Costco at 81. The latest results therefore show strong performance across several retail formats rather than an advantage belonging exclusively to membership warehouses.

Sam’s Club’s 83-point ACSI score gives it the highest customer satisfaction rating among the named general merchandise retailers in the 2026 study. That distinction is meaningful because the ACSI applies a consistent national methodology across major competitors and has tracked general merchandise retail satisfaction for decades.

It does not mean Sam’s Club is the largest retailer, the cheapest retailer or the strongest company financially. Nor does the study measure every possible dimension of the shopping experience.

What it does show is more specific. Among customers surveyed about their recent experiences with major U.S. general merchandise retailers, Sam’s Club generated the highest overall satisfaction score in the ACSI’s 2026 benchmark.

Its lead was smaller than a year earlier, and several competitors gained ground. But in a retail environment where customers increasingly expect value, reliable digital tools and fewer obstacles between finding a product and taking it home, Sam’s Club remained the company at the top of the category.