CHICAGO –– H-E-B has regained the leadership position in the sixth annual dunnhumby Retailer Preference Index (RPI), an examination of the U.S. grocery market by data science firm dunnhumby. Costco Wholesale holds the second position in this year’s index, followed by Amazon. Wegmans held the fourth position for the third consecutive year.

Rounding out the top 15 are Sam’s Club, Market Basket, Amazon Fresh, Trader Joe’s, Winco, BJ’s Wholesale, Target, Aldi, ShopRite, Walmart Neighborhood Market and Walmart.

“We believe this report can serve as a blueprint to help grocers improve their competitive positions, while providing key findings for marketing and consumer preferences,” said Matt O’Grady, president of the America’s at dunnhumby.

The dunnhumby RPI ranks grocers through a combination of financial performance with customer perception. It includes the largest 63 retailers in the industry that sell everyday food and nonfood household items. The financial data used in the dunnhumby model comes from Edge Ascential, and the customer perception data is sourced from dunnhumby’s annual survey of 10,000 American grocery shoppers.

Based on dunnhumby’s analysis of 30,000 consumers surveyed between October 2021 and November 2022, there are five drivers of the value proposition: price, promotions and rewards; speed and convenience; quality; digital; and operations.

“In 2017, we set out on a journey to understand how customers’ preferences and retailers’ financial results predicted which retailers would last,” O’Grady said. “But little did we know that in the ensuing six years consumers and retailers would have a lifetime of difficulties, including a pandemic that shook consumer behavior and the global economy, a prolonged period of supply change struggles, and a once-in-a-generation inflation crisis.”