Skip to main content

Amazon wins the 2012 holiday season

Christmas may be over, but Amazon still has good reason to be celebrating holiday cheer. For the eighth year running, the site has been ranked at the top when it comes to customer satisfaction during the gift-giving season, achieving the highest retail score ever in an annual survey for the second year in a row. As if that wasn’t enough, the company also celebrated a record-shattering holiday season with more than 300 items being sold per second at its peak.

Analytics company ForeSee recently released the results of its annual Holiday E-Retail Satisfaction Index survey. Amazon came out on top in the survey, which draws its findings from more than 24,000 customer surveys collected from online shoppers  in the United States during the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, matching last year’s record high score of 88 (out of a possible 100). Competitor Apple fell from last year’s second place to well outside the top five altogether in 2012, achieving its lowest score in four years. Dell also dropped to 77 points, falling three points shy of last year’s score.

Recommended Videos

“At this point, Amazon has been dominant for so long and has such a history of focusing on the customer, its hard to imagine anyone else coming close,” said Larry Freed, ForSee president and CEO, in the report. “Companies should emulate Amazon’s focus on the customer, which is clearly linked to superior revenues over the years.”

Superior revenues indeed. Coinciding with the ForeSee Index announcement, Amazon has revealed that 2012 was the company’s best holiday season to date, with Black Friday orders toppling a staggering 26.5 million. According to a press release, Amazon’s Kindle Fire was the best-selling item throughout the holiday season for the second year running, officially becoming the company’s best-selling, most-gifted and most wished for product ever. Unsurprisingly, that meant that people wanted content for the device as soon as they received it, with Christmas Day being named as the company’s biggest day ever for digital downloads on record. App and game sales during the holiday season also rose, with a 250-percent increase compared with the same period in 2011.

Amazon’s CEO and founder Jeff Bezos released a short statement in response to the news.

“We are grateful to customers for once again ranking us at the top of the ForeSee customer satisfaction survey and for choosing to shop at Amazon this holiday,” Bezos said. “On behalf of Amazon employees around the world, we wish everyone happy holidays and the best for the coming year.”

Graeme McMillan
Former Digital Trends Contributor
A transplant from the west coast of Scotland to the west coast of America, Graeme is a freelance writer with a taste for pop…
Many hybrids rank as most reliable of all vehicles, Consumer Reports finds
many hybrids rank as most reliable of all vehicles evs progress consumer reports cr tout cars 0224

For the U.S. auto industry, if not the global one, 2024 kicked off with media headlines celebrating the "renaissance" of hybrid vehicles. This came as many drivers embraced a practical, midway approach rather than completely abandoning gas-powered vehicles in favor of fully electric ones.

Now that the year is about to end, and the future of tax incentives supporting electric vehicle (EV) purchases is highly uncertain, it seems the hybrid renaissance still has many bright days ahead. Automakers have heard consumer demands and worked on improving the quality and reliability of hybrid vehicles, according to the Consumer Reports (CR) year-end survey.

Read more
U.S. EVs will get universal plug and charge access in 2025
u s evs will get universal plug charge access in 2025 ev car to charging station power cable plugged shutterstock 1650839656

And then, it all came together.

Finding an adequate, accessible, and available charging station; charging up; and paying for the service before hitting the road have all been far from a seamless experience for many drivers of electric vehicles (EVs) in the U.S.

Read more
Rivian tops owner satisfaction survey, ahead of BMW and Tesla
The front three-quarter view of a 2022 Rivian against a rocky backdrop.

Can the same vehicle brand sit both at the bottom of owner ratings in terms of reliability and at the top in terms of overall owner satisfaction? When that brand is Rivian, the answer is a resonant yes.

Rivian ranked number one in satisfaction for the second year in a row, with owners especially giving their R1S and R1T electric vehicle (EV) high marks in terms of comfort, speed, drivability, and ease of use, according to the latest Consumer Reports (CR) owner satisfaction survey.

Read more