Preliminary results from the latest Roy Morgan Liquor Retailing Report for the liquor retailers show Dan Murphy’s and 1st Choice both had small declines in Customer Satisfaction in the September result but they continue to rate significantly above each of the other liquor retailers.

Among Dan Murphy’s customers 91.3% (down 1.1% since June ‘09) were satisfied, closely followed by 1st Choice with 89.8% (down 0.9% Since June ‘09). There remains a large gap to the next group of stores led by LiquorLand (81.5%), who have taken over the third position and BWS at 80.2%, who have dropped to fourth position. Woolworths’ Liquor continued its improvement at 77% for the 12 months’ average to September 2009.

Click here to purchase detailed Roy Morgan "Target Profiles" of customers of each of Australia's liquor retailers

During the last 12 months Roy Morgan Research conducted over 3,000 face to face interviews with small business owners which showed that the 'Big Four' banks have improved marginally in terms of their customer satisfaction (+0.2 percentage points to 64.3% at December 2010) but still have a long way to close the gap to their overall consumer banking performance (72.4% at December 2010).

In the 12 months to December 2009 St George was the market leader amongst the big five banks for satisfaction amongst small business owners with 72.4%, although this was down 2.1 percentage points from 12 months ago. Bendigo Bank was the overall market leader with 84.5% (down 4.3 percentage points).

ANZ remained the best performer amongst the 'Big Four' for both small business owners and overall consumer banking, but has slipped a little over the last 12 months amongst small business owners (- 0.7 percentage points). Westpac is in second place followed by CBA and NAB.

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The latest Roy Morgan Image of Supermarkets data places Woolworths 5.9% points ahead of rival Coles, whilst Aldi are positioned marginally behind Coles by less than one percentage point.

When asked about the image of supermarkets, 32.2% of grocery buyers said that Woolworths was ‘Good value’, shown here gaining in the last 9 months on the back of a long period of decline. Coincidentally Coles has seen similar gains starting in the same month as Woolworths, with a recovery of their image as being ‘Good Value’ from January 2009.

Since Aldi entered into the Australian market, their value perception has been continuously increasing. The latest result places them just behind Coles, with 25.7% of all grocery buyers perceiving Aldi as being ‘Good value.’ Compared to the two major supermarket chains Aldi’s ‘Good Value’ perception appears to have slowed, especially after over 3 years of consistent growth.

Click here to purchase a detailed "Roy Morgan Supermarket Satisfaction Report"

The latest face-to-face Morgan Poll conducted over two weekends, January 23/24 & 30/31, 2010 shows the ALP (56.5%, down 2% since the last face-to-face poll conducted on January 9/10 & January 16/17, 2010) maintaining a strong two-party preferred lead over the L-NP (43.5%, up 2%).

The ALP primary vote fell 1.5% to 46%, and remains clearly ahead of the L-NP (38%, up 2.5%), while looking at the minor parties shows support for the Greens (8.5%, down 1.5%), Family First (1.5%, down 0.5%) and Independents/ Others (6%, up 1%).

The Roy Morgan Government Confidence Rating is now at 137 (up 0.5pts) with 61% (up 1.5%) of Australians confident that Australia is ‘heading in the right direction,’ compared to 24% (up 1%) that say Australia is ‘heading in the wrong direction.’

The latest Roy Morgan NZ Poll shows support for John Key’s National-led Government is virtually unchanged, down 0.5% to 57.5% comprising National Party 52% (down 1%), Maori Party 3% (up 0.5%), ACT NZ 2% (unchanged) and United Future 0.5% (unchanged).

Support for Opposition Parties is 42.5% (up 0.5%); Labour Party 32% (up 2%), Greens 6% (down 2%), NZ First 3.5% (up 1%), The Progressive Party 0.5% (unchanged) and Others 0.5% (down 0.5%).

If a National Election were held today the National Party would win easily.

• In the month of January Australia’s total unemployment as measured by Roy Morgan was 875,000 (7.5%), up 102,000 (0.7%) since December, and up 108,000 since January 2009.

• In January 2010 there were 7,492,000 (up 299,000 on December 2009 and up 297,000 on January 2009) Australians working full-time and 3,332,000 (down 136,000 on December 2009, but up a large 159,000 on January 2009) working part-time.

• The latest Roy Morgan January 2010 unemployment estimate is 2% above the 5.5% currently quoted by the ABS for December 2009.

• The Roy Morgan January 2010 ‘under-employed’* estimate is 845,000 (7.2%), down 87,000 (1.0%) on December 2009, but still up 62,000 on a year ago, January 2009.

Dear Dr van Onselen,

I was pleased to read your article yesterday 'Reintroduce flexibility to increase productivity’ in The Australian, Business Backpage.

We completely agree with your comments regarding IR reform, unfortunately neither side of politics handles the unemployment issue correctly because they ‘refuse’ to acknowledge the real extent of people seeking ‘work’ (unemployed) or ‘more work’ (under-employed) – many more than the present Rudd Government (or previous Howard Government) want people to believe – a sham!

While politicians argue that the unemployment ‘trend’ is what matters, once you begin to analyse deeper economic issues such as ‘productivity’ and the relationship between unemployment, under-employment and inflation, it is crucial only ‘real’ employment data is used.

Under the Howard Government the least productive ‘end of the workforce’ was not employed – they were just not counted! Understanding this makes a large difference to understanding how to increase ‘productivity.'

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Consumer Confidence is virtually unchanged at 127.9 (down 0.3pts in a week), according to the weekly Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence Rating conducted on the weekend of January 30/31, 2010. The Consumer Confidence rating is now 34.5pts higher than a year ago, January 31/February 1, 2009 (93.4).

The slight fall in the weekly Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence Rating has been driven by less confidence about respondents financial situations in 12 months time.

In terms of personal finances, now 43% (down 4%) of Australians expect their family to be ‘better off financially’ this time next year compared to 14% (up 2%) of Australians that expect their family to be ‘worse off financially.’

Of Australians, 45% (down 4%) say we’ll have ‘good times’ financially in the next 12 months compared to 15% (down 3%) that say we’ll have ‘bad times’ financially.

Click here to purchase a detailed "Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence Monthly Report"