Who doesn’t like low prices? Turns out many people don’t, if they’re unfair or illegal.

Walmart is again being targeted for allegedly abusing its size and market dominance to undercut competitors, lowering prices only to ultimately cost consumers more.

The National Grocers Association, which represents independent grocery retailers, is again calling on federal regulators to scrutinize Walmart’s pricing practices. The trade group has sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, urging them to “address market manipulation by dominant national grocery retail power buyers, especially Walmart.”

It’s not the first time the NGA has urged an investigation. Five years ago, it called on Congress to “investigate the unchecked power of big box stores and e-commerce giants.” It accused them of using their scale and influence to get preferential treatment from suppliers, who then charge higher prices to other grocery customers to make up for it.

It seemed their call was answered, when the FTC filed a lawsuit against PepsiCo last year for allegedly violating antitrust laws by providing Walmart “with a slew of promotional payments, allowances, and services… while failing to make similar benefits available to competitors.”

But that lawsuit was dropped just a few months later, as a new presidential administration with new priorities took charge.

Late last year, a version of the dismissed lawsuit with far fewer redactions and far more detail was released, which gave critics like the NGA new ammunition in their argument against big-box retailers’ pricing practices.

So we’ve come full circle, with the NGA once again sounding the alarm and demanding action.

Under the “scheme” described in court documents, the NGA’s new letter reads, “Pepsi monitored competitors’ pricing and, when rivals moved too close to Walmart’s price, responded not by lowering Walmart’s price but by
reducing promotions and increasing costs for non-Walmart retailers.” In one example the NGA cited, when Food Lion’s pricing of Pepsi products “threatened Walmart’s advantage, Pepsi allegedly implemented a multi-year plan to raise Food Lion’s wholesale costs, directly increasing retail prices paid by consumers.”

“These findings directly challenge the unsubstantiated assumption that buyer power automatically benefits consumers,” NGA Chief Government Relations Officer and Counsel Chris Jones said in a statement. “When dominant retailers coerce suppliers into subsidizing their advantage, the costs do not disappear. They are pushed onto family-owned supermarkets and, ultimately, onto consumers.”

PepsiCo strongly denied the claims in the FTC lawsuit. “We do not favor certain customers by offering discounts or promotional support to some customers and not others,” the company insisted after the lawsuit was filed. Shortly after the unredacted dismissed lawsuit was released, though, several consumers filed proposed class-action lawsuits against both PepsiCo and Walmart, using the FTC’s own arguments to claim that they, as consumers, were forced to pay higher prices for Pepsi products at other retailers because of the deals Pepsi allegedly made with Walmart.

So several NGA warnings, and several lawsuits, later, Walmart’s pricing practices have so far escaped serious scrutiny. The retailer, and at least one of its suppliers, may insist they’re doing nothing wrong. But federal regulators – and federal courts – may ultimately get the final say.

Image source: Walmart

Dozens of online influencers are in the midst of a yearlong legal battle against the online coupon code finder Honey, for allegedly stealing sales commissions from them.

At the same time, at least 19 online shoppers say Honey is costing them money, too, by allegedly making false claims that it will search for and apply the best available coupons.

Now one set of those shoppers is making new allegations, in a revised lawsuit that seeks to address a judge’s concerns – and expose more alleged wrongdoing from a coupon finder they say they once trusted to help them save money.

Seven shoppers from the UK, where Honey’s browser extension is also available, have filed an amended lawsuit against PayPal-owned Honey in its home state of California. They’re again accusing the company of engaging in unfair competition, as they did when first filing their complaint last year. But in response to a judge’s order to refine their arguments and detail the losses they claim they suffered, they’ve now added additional allegations, accusing the company of benefiting from unjust enrichment, and invading its users’ privacy.

For a lawsuit that began with the argument that Honey is not actually finding the best available coupons as it claims, the invasion of privacy allegation is the most curious new addition. The plaintiffs claim they never agreed to allow the Honey browser extension to “examine what websites they have visited and what cookies exist on their browser.” This “intrusion into the electronic devices” of users “is so serious as to contribute an egregious breach of the social norms” and “is not routine commercial behavior,” the shoppers claim.

The new unjust enrichment claim relies on the fact that Honey receives sales commissions from partner retailers, so by allegedly deceiving shoppers, those commissions are ill-gotten gains.

The heart of the shoppers’ case remains the same – that Honey promised to “automatically search the internet for the ‘best’ coupons and discount codes, and will apply them to the Honey user’s purchase to provide the Honey user with the lowest possible price,” when they say Honey does not actually do so at all. And they offer new claims to support that allegation.

Further investigation, they say, has found that Honey never searches the internet for coupons at all, relying instead on coupons obtained from affiliate networks, Honey subscribers or from the merchants themselves. Partner retailers, they allege, can even offer Honey lower-value coupons than users might be able to find online themselves, or that Honey might find if it actually did “search the internet” for the best available coupons.

Believing Honey’s promises like “If there’s a better price, we’ll find it,” “Honey finds you the internet’s best discount codes,” “We’ll find every working promo code online,” and “We’ll apply the code with the biggest savings,” the plaintiffs say they “ceased to perform their own searches” for coupons, trusting Honey to find and apply “the best one.”

So they’re suing to get their money back, for each time they or any other Honey user “paid more for an item than he or she would have paid if he or she knew that the Honey browser extension did not actually search for the ‘best’ coupons or discount codes.” They call Honey’s actions “immoral, unethical, oppressive, unscrupulous and substantially injurious to consumers.”

Most of the scrutiny of Honey and competing coupon-finding browser extensions has focused on how they allegedly “steal” sales commissions from online content creators. Those creators often recommend products to their followers, and earn a commission if their recommendation leads to a sale. But if the shopper clicks on the Honey browser extension looking for a coupon, Honey can claim the sales commission instead.

Dozens of online influencers sued Honey for doing so. Only one of those influencers went on to accuse Honey of false advertising, for misleading users “into believing that by installing and using the Honey browser extension they were getting the best available discounts when in fact, they were not.” But when all of the individual lawsuits were consolidated into a single case, that claim disappeared.

Instead, several shoppers filed lawsuits of their own. The current case is a proposed class action on behalf of all Honey users in the UK. Two other pending cases filed last year, since consolidated into a single lawsuit with a dozen plaintiffs, have made similar claims on behalf of American Honey users. Honey is currently trying to get that dispute resolved via arbitration rather than in the courts.

Online coupon code finders portray themselves as convenient ways to use coupons and save money. Dissatisfied shoppers say that convenience comes at a steep cost. It will be up to the courts to determine whether that constitutes “immoral, unethical, oppressive, unscrupulous” behavior, or if it’s just the behavior of a company looking to make money by saving shoppers money – even if the savings are not as great as some shoppers hoped.

Image source: Honey/Mockuper

Six years ago, grocery shoppers were extremely pleased with Wegmans, ranking it best among all grocery stores on a closely-watched annual list. It was the third time the fan-favorite chain topped the American Customer Satisfaction Index.

So what happened?

The ACSI’s latest annual ranking is out, and Wegmans has plummeted six percentage points in customer satisfaction, dropping it down to the respectable but unimpressive “solidly average” portion of the list.

That’s the biggest change on this year’s list, which otherwise doesn’t differ a whole lot from last year. Across 19 major chains (and one catchall “all others” category) ranked in the survey, eight have the same customer satisfaction score as last year, while seven shifted only a single percentage point. The big winners are Trader Joe’s and Save A Lot, which showed the most improvement, while Hy-Vee and Albertsons join Wegmans as the biggest losers year-over-year.

For more than three decades, ACSI has asked tens of thousands of shoppers to evaluate their recent experiences at their local grocery stores, rating the retailers on a scale of 1-100. The grocery industry as a whole earned a score of 78 this year, down one point from last year, “as supermarkets continue to struggle amid inflationary prices and stiff competition,” the ACSI noted.

When shoppers were asked to rate their satisfaction with specific store attributes, grocers fared worst with speed of checkout. Dissatisfaction with the frequency of sales and promotions was not far behind, though both were up slightly from last year. Along with convenience of store hours and location, shoppers expressed the greatest satisfaction with online attributes – satisfaction with their store’s website, its mobile app, and the ease of the pickup process. “These patterns align with broader retail findings from 2025, which emphasized the growing importance of value, app performance, fulfillment accuracy, and seamless omnichannel execution,” the ACSI noted.

Here now are this year’s rankings, featuring a familiar name atop the list, a repeat offender at the bottom, and plenty of satisfied and dissatisfied shoppers in between:

1. Trader Joe’s (86)
Tied with Publix last year, Trader Joe’s improved two points to claim the top spot for itself this year. The grocery chain is no stranger to the upper levels of this list – it’s the seventh time in eight years it’s been tied or sitting solo at number one. As it continues to grow, with more than 600 locations across the country, “Trader Joe’s manages to maintain its hallmark customer experience,” the ACSI observed. So in this case, it appears bigger really does mean better.

2. Publix (84)
Publix held steady with the same score as last year. That was enough for second place, given Trader Joe’s improvement. While it’s usually in the top three or higher, Publix hasn’t had the top spot all to itself since 2018. But its score has consistently been 80 or above, so there’s something to be said for consistency – even if the competition is getting steeper.

3. H-E-B (83)
H-E-B was one of only three grocers to improve over last year, increasing a modest one point in the survey. The Texas-based grocery chain topped a recent dunnhumby survey of top performers, “due to its superior ability to deliver a combination of better savings, quality, experience, and assortment.” The ACSI largely agreed with that assessment, citing H-E-B’s “strong value proposition and execution as drivers of its continued success in an inflation-sensitive environment.”

4. Sam’s Club (82)
Sam’s Club slipped a point in this year’s grocery satisfaction survey, but that’s not causing the retailer to lose any sleep. Sam’s is included in both the grocery and general merchandise rankings, and it held on to the number-one spot on the general merchandise list, besting other club stores, dollar stores, department stores and big-box stores. For a retailer that sells a lot more than groceries, reaching number four on the grocery satisfaction list is as good as a win.

5. Whole Foods/Costco/ALDI (tie, 81)
This year’s list has clear winners, as seen above – and losers, yet to come. Many other grocers, however, find themselves clumped together in the middle. You probably couldn’t come up with a more unlikely trio sharing fifth place, with low-cost ALDI, high-end Whole Foods and club store Costco earning the very same satisfaction score. But different shoppers have different needs – the customer base of these three stores may not overlap much, but all of them appear to be equally satisfied.

8. Target/ShopRite/”All others” (tie, 79)
Target and ShopRite each slip one notch to tie with “all others,” otherwise known as the average score of every grocery chain too small to be listed in the rankings individually. Target is in the midst of a multi-year effort to improve its grocery business, while ShopRite is typically well-regarded in the Northeast for having good promotions and deals. But each apparently has some work to do, to distinguish them from the “others.”

11. Wegmans/Save A Lot/Meijer/Kroger/Ahold Delhaize (tie, 78)
The average score for all grocery chains is 78. Few would dispute that the likes of Kroger, Meijer and Ahold Delhaize-owned stores like Food Lion and Giant are anything other than average. For Save A Lot, though, average is an improvement, as its satisfaction gain of four points is the largest this year. “In 2025, the company expanded its loyalty program and mobile app while implementing widespread store refreshes, reopening initiatives, and layout improvements,” the ACSI noted. “These efforts seem to be contributing to a more efficient, streamlined in-store experience.” As for Wegmans? It’s gone from top tier to average. “According to ACSI data, customers are less pleased with their in-store experiences for factors such as store layout, staff courtesy, and checkout speed,” the survey-takers found. From its upstate New York base, Wegmans has grown rapidly, to more than 100 stores, expanding as far south as North Carolina. Expansion hasn’t hurt Trader Joe’s. It appears the same cannot be said for Wegmans.

16. BJ’s Wholesale Club (77)
We now find ourselves in the below-average category, where BJ’s is the first entrant. Its score stayed steady from last year, but that’s nothing to brag about, since last year’s score was the result of a five-point slide from the year before. Back then, it was in the upper tier, tied with Target, Wegmans and Whole Foods. Now it finds itself with plenty of room for improvement.

17. Hy-Vee (76)
Next to Wegmans’ six-point drop, Hy-Vee suffered one of the worst declines this year, its score slipping three points to a below-average 76. Four years ago, the Midwestern grocer announced ambitious plans to expand into four new states. So far, those plans have stalled. While expansion seems to be working for Trader Joe’s and working against Wegmans, when it comes to Hy-Vee, standing still doesn’t appear to be a winning strategy, either.

18. Walmart (75)
“We’re number 18!” That doesn’t sound like something to brag about, but it’s a definite improvement. Walmart was dead last on the ACSI list for an astounding nineteen years. Last year, it surged into second-worst place. This year, third-worst. If it continues on this trajectory, number-one just might be in reach, by the year 2043.

19. Albertsons (74)
Along with Hy-Vee, Albertsons suffered a three-point decline this year, dropping it below longtime basement-dweller Walmart for the first time. The two actually tied for last place back in 2021. So second-to-last isn’t good – but for Albertsons, it could be worse.

20. Giant Eagle (73)
Last year’s loser is this year’s loser, too. For the first time, Giant Eagle was alone in bringing up the rear last year, and it repeats that performance this time around, while declining one point in the process. “The worst of the worst,” a recent Yelp reviewer wrote. “Always busy and over priced,” another observed. A third reviewer cited “lines, cashier shortages, no one to help in self checkout when you have restricted items, bakery looks like it is always closed with no lights on, deli has slow wait times and you can hear them complaining about their job loads, rude customer service.” With reviews like that, a score of 73 might be generous.

With shoppers expressing plenty of dissatisfaction with grocery prices these days, the fact that most grocers’ satisfaction scores stayed pretty steady year-over-year is a notable achievement for the industry. Trader Joe’s is certainly pleased, while Giant Eagle is used to disappointment by now. But Wegmans has more work to do than most, as it will need to decide whether to work to reverse its slide to “fair” from “favorite” – or simply accept being average.

Image source: Wegmans

“Is This the Future of Grocery Shopping – Or Just Hype?” is the question that a Coupons in the News article posed nearly a decade ago, about Amazon’s high-tech entry into the low-tech physical grocery space.

It now appears to have been the latter.

Amazon is officially abandoning its effort to operate Amazon-branded grocery stores, announcing the permanent closure of all of its 14 Amazon Go and 58 Amazon Fresh stores. The stores not only represented Amazon’s attempt to plant its flag in the brick-and-mortar grocery business, but an effort to revolutionize the very concept of in-store grocery shopping.

While Amazon has had limited success with the technology it embedded in both store formats, their revolutionary promise may have been just hype after all. The stores’ tech tools are far from widespread, and the future of grocery shopping now will no longer include grocery stores with the Amazon name out front.

“While we’ve seen encouraging signals in our Amazon-branded physical grocery stores, we haven’t yet created a truly distinctive customer experience with the right economic model needed for large-scale expansion,” the company acknowledged in announcing the closures. “After a careful evaluation of the business and how we can best serve customers, we’ve made the difficult decision to close our Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh physical stores, converting various locations into Whole Foods Market stores.”

Amazon’s first Amazon Go prototype store, which opened back in 2016, predated the company’s purchase of Whole Foods a year later. That purchase led many to believe that Amazon would redirect its physical-store focus to Whole Foods, while perfecting grocery delivery via Amazon.com.

Instead, Amazon kept tinkering with its own Amazon-branded stores, launching two different formats that existed awkwardly alongside Whole Foods and Amazon’s own grocery delivery service.

Amazon Go stores feature what Amazon calls “the world’s most advanced shopping technology,” allowing you to grab what you need and “just walk out” without having to scan anything or stop to pay. That technology proved to be better suited to small convenience-type stores than a full grocery store, so a few years later, Amazon launched the separate Amazon Fresh chain of more conventional grocery stores. These feature Amazon’s “smart” grocery carts, which still require you to scan your items as you shop, but you don’t have to unload them all to pay at a traditional checkout.

And now, the company appears to have come full circle, doing exactly what it seemed likely to do after acquiring Whole Foods. By “prioritizing our investments,” as Amazon now puts it, the company will redirect its physical grocery store focus to Whole Foods, while perfecting online grocery on its own website.

Grocery delivery has certainly grown since 2016, and Amazon says it’s now “doubling down on online grocery delivery.” It plans to expand same-day delivery of packaged and perishable groceries to more communities in the year ahead, and is testing an “ultra-fast delivery option” that will bring groceries to your door in 30 minutes or less.

As for physical stores, in addition to the dozens of former Amazon stores that will be converted to Whole Foods, Amazon plans to open more than a hundred brand new Whole Foods stores over the next few years, “increasing our investment in our physical stores that are resonating with customers,” as the company put it.

“Amazon is prudent to divert its investments to areas where they can have impact and generate a stronger return,” Neil Saunders, Managing Director and Retail Analyst at GlobalData Retail, wrote on LinkedIn. When it comes to physical stores, “grocery shopping is extremely habitual, and getting shoppers to switch where they buy requires clear and compelling differentiation,” he continued. “Neither Fresh nor Go stores offered this.”

But never say never, when it comes to Amazon succeeding in traditional retail. “Over the coming years, we plan to introduce new store concepts that we think customers will be excited about,” Amazon promised. While giving up on Amazon-branded traditional grocery stores, it’s thinking big – and small. Small, in the form of mini-stores offering a small selection of groceries sold under the Amazon name inside or alongside existing Whole Foods locations. And big, in the form of a Walmart-like supercenter that it’s currently planning to build near Chicago.

“Through it all, our goal remains: to make grocery shopping easier, faster, and more affordable for customers,” Amazon pledged. So Amazon may not have revolutionized grocery shopping in its ten years of trying. But “easier, faster and more affordable” may be a far more achievable goal – and for shoppers who aren’t wowed by technology and bold promises, a far more desirable one.

Image source: Amazon

Check your pantry, your fridge, or your shopping cart the next time you get groceries. How many products from the national brands that you grew up with do you have – and how many are store brands?

If you’re like the average shopper, nearly one out of every four products is a store brand.

That’s a new record, according to the Private Label Manufacturers Association. Its newest annual report has found that an all-time high of 23.5% of all grocery products sold last year were private label products. The percentage of grocery dollars spent on store brands was only slightly less, at 21.3%.

Overall, sales of private label products in all retail outlets rose more than $9 billion, to a record-high $282.8 billion.

And as store brands are growing, national brands’ dominance is slipping. The total number of store brand products sold last year rose more than half a percent, to 68.7 billion units, while national brands declined by about a half percent. In total dollars, store brand sales increased 3.3%, nearly three times the 1.2% growth rate of national brands.

“Store brands are outperforming national brands across the U.S., growing faster, expanding share, and delivering record-setting sales results,” PLMA President Peggy Davies said in a statement.

A survey by FMI – The Food Industry Association last summer found that more than half of all shoppers said store brands were very or extremely important in deciding where to shop. While most store-brand buyers said value and affordability drives their decisions, nearly half said they’re very likely to continue purchasing private brands even if grocery prices fall. “This indicates that shopper loyalty to these brands is strong and no longer based only on price,” FMI concluded.

Shoppers seem particularly pleased with store-brand refrigerated foods and pet care products, according to the PLMA. Private label pet care product sales increased more than any other category, with 5.4% more units sold last year. In dollar sales, store brand products in the refrigerated department saw the highest gains, up 6.1%.

Retailers still have some work to do, however, in getting shoppers to buy some store brand products. In the FMI survey, shoppers said they were least likely to buy store brands in the pet food, coffee/tea, and health and beauty care categories.

FMI found that 86% of retailers and manufacturers planned to increase their investments in private brands over the next two years. And some that have done so recently, are already seeing success. A new report from Numerator ranked the ten fastest-growing private label brands of the past year, and each of the top four were just a year old – Target’s Gigglescape and Dealworthy, CVS’s Well Market and Walmart’s Bettergoods. ALDI dominated the rest of the list, with four of its brands making it into the top ten.

“Private label growth reflects a shift in consumer priorities,” the PLMA’s Davies concluded, “as retailer-owned brands increasingly compete — and win — on value, quality, health, and sustainability, not just price.”

Low prices may have enticed many shoppers to switch brands. Being happy with their purchases is what’s likely to turn them from one-time buyers into repeat customers. And if that trend continues, store brands making up one in four of your grocery products could be just the start.

Image source: Walmart