Study says Augusta consumers are pretty picky

Which city do you think has pickier consumers: Augusta or Atlanta?

One might assume big-city folks – Atlanta is America's ninth-largest city – would be a little kinder toward shopkeepers than in a mid-sized market steeped in Southern hospitality, but one would be wrong.

At least, according to a review of online ratings for local businesses by data firm Womply, which says Augusta consumers are slightly more likely to give a small business a harsh review than consumers in Atlanta.

The transaction analytics firm said the positive-review rate for Augusta-area small businesses during 2018 was 81.5%, while the rate for Atlanta during the same period was 82.4%. In terms of national ranking, Atlanta came in at No. 359 out of the 600 U.S. population centers studied; Augusta was No. 439.

I suppose there are two ways to look at this: Augusta consumers are either more difficult to please, or Augusta's small businesses are more deserving of bad reviews than small businesses in Atlanta.

I'm not the best person to speculate on this, considering I spend as little time in Atlanta as possible. What do you think?

At any rate, Augusta's business-approval rating was essentially on par with Milledgeville, which was ranked No. 433. Augusta consumers are much less harsh than consumers in the Georgia cities of Gainesville (No. 520), Brunswick (No. 535), Albany (No. 559) and Statesboro (No. 586), where the positive review rate was a mere 74.4% – which means roughly one out of every four small business reviews was negative.

But bad reviews don't necessarily translate to bad business. Womply's analysis found that businesses with online ratings between 3.5 stars and 4.5 stars had higher earnings than 5-star businesses. In fact, businesses whose reviews are 15% to 20% negative earn 13% more in annual revenue than businesses whose reviews are only 5% to 10% negative. Go figure.

As for the types of industries we judge most harshly, hotels come out on top, with lodging places averaging only a 69% positive review rate. At the other end of the spectrum were religious organizations (which I personally don't consider "businesses") with a 92% positive rating. The average for all industries studied was 81.3%.

Taken as a whole, Georgia's 81% positive-review rate made it the 35th kindest consumer state. South Carolina's 81.6% rate made it the nation's 22nd kindest.

Where are consumers most likely to give a positive review? Maine, where 85% of customers give high marks to local businesses. Nevadans were the least likely to leave favorable reviews, at 77.7%.

Hey, it's Nevada – it's likely a good portion of those negative reviews were left by out-of-towners upset over losing money at the casinos.

If any small business owners are trying to divine a conclusion from this analysis, Womply was kind enough to do it for you: "Online reviews are a proxy for word of mouth in the digital age," the study said. "Local businesses that recognize and respond to how consumers use the internet to find, evaluate, and choose where to spend perform better financially than those that don’t."

The firm says local businesses experience the best revenue performance when they:

• Claim all their free business listings on relevant review sites

• Are highly responsive to customer feedback posted on review sites

• Get and maintain a star rating between 3.5 and 4.5 on key review sites

• Receive a steady flow of authentic reviews from real customers

• Have an authentic review profile, comprised of about 15-30% negative reviews

I suppose the takeaway here is that small business owners should do their best to respond to reviews – including negative ones. And that in the online world, even bad reviews can be good for business.

SOCKET TO ME: I found it interesting that Womply's report said small businesses in the "auto services" industry received an average of 82.6% positive reviews, which is about 1.3% above the average for all businesses.

I would have presumed it to be lower, considering most consumers generally aren't happy about spending money on car repairs and such. I figured they would be predisposed to complain – justified or not.

One thing we can say about auto repair is that Augusta is one of the best places in America to be a mechanic. The second best – to be precise – according to a study of 388 metro areas by business insurance firm AdvisorSmith.

Augusta was ranked No. 2 in the large-city category, right behind Memphis, Tenn. What makes Augusta a wrench-head heaven? Our low cost of living, primarily.

The firm said metro Augusta's 17% below-average cost-of-living makes the average annual salary for service techs – $42,740 – stretch much further than the typical market. It also said Augusta has 22 percent more jobs for auto mechanics on a per-capita basis compared to the rest of the nation.

Out of all cities – large and small – Augusta ranked No. 28, beating out Georgia metro areas such as Albany (No. 47), Dalton (No. 67) and Athens (No. 78).

On the big-city list, rounding out the rest of the top five was St. Louis, Winston-Salem, N.C., and Birmingham, Ala.

MORTGAGE MATTERS: Let's face it – home prices are the biggest reason metro Augusta's cost of living is perennially below the national average. We also have relatively cheap gas, too, but its our home prices that push us under the line.

The Greater Augusta Association of Realtors reports the median home sale in metro area during July was $193,000, which is about 32 percent lower than the national median of $285,700 in June (national figures for July won't be out until later this month, but this is close enough for comparison).

A total of 963 homes were sold in Richmond, Columbia and the west side of Aiken counties during July, a fairly substantial increase – 23 percent – from the 782 homes sold in July 2018.

The one-year appreciation in median sales prices, 4.3 percent, ain't too shabby either. Also, metro-area homes are selling at a faster pace. Homes sold last month spent an average of 104 days on the market, compared to 133 days during the same period the previous year.

A HIP JOINT: A recent analysis of Medicare claims by New York-based health care research firm Dexur shows University Hospital had Georgia's sixth-highest case volume for hip and knee replacement surgeries.

The hospital performed 1,645 of the orthopedic procedures, according to a review of nearly three years of records – Jan. 2016 to Dec. 2018.

The top five included two metro Atlanta hospitals, Northside Hospital Forsyth (No. 1) and WellStar Kennestone Hospital (No. 3), as well as Savannah's St. Joseph's Hospital (No. 2), Athens' St. Mary's Hospital (No. 4), and Gainesville's Northeast Georgia Medical Center (No. 5).

The only other local hospital to make Dexur's list was Doctors Hospital (No. 10), which performed 890 procedures.

AU Health, which also performs the procedures, was not listed. But it most likely would have been if the folks at Dexur included government-supported hospitals (Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital – the state's third-largest – wasn't on the list either).

LET'S GET PHYSICAL (THERAPY): Wherever you get your hip or knee joint replaced, there's a good chance you could end up having your post-surgery recovery at GeorgiaLina Physical Therapy Associates.

The area's largest outpatient physical therapy practice is buildings its newest free-standing facility in the Furys Ferry Road Publix shopping center on an outparcel sandwiched between the Jersey Mike's Subs sandwich shop and the Toast liquor store.

Managing Partner Brett Brannon said the 4,800-square-foot office should be open by the end of the year at 415 Furys Ferry Road. The new office is just up the street from the company's storefront space in the formerly BI-LO-anchored Petersburg Shoppes retail center.

The company hasn't made a decision yet whether it will close the older office once the new one is built.

"Given the growth we have experienced in these programs, there is a chance we will continue in the existing location in order to have room for all programs to continue to grow," Brannon said.

However it shakes out, the new office will feature the practice's Centers of Excellence programs, including Aquatic Therapy and Women's Health.

CALLING ALL NURSES: The Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center has scheduled a hiring event Aug. 14 for registered nurses and licensed practical nurses. The job fair, from 7:30-10 a.m. at the VA's downtown campus, is seeking nurses for open positions in units such as spinal cord, emergency department, mental health, primary care and others.

Bring a resume and – if you're highly qualified – be prepared for an on-the-spot interview. Call nurse recruiter Phoebe Burda at (706) 733-0188, extension 2440, for more info.

J.C. PENNEY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS?: Last week's column item on Jordan Trotter Commercial Real Estate ramping up marketing efforts for Broad Street's long-vacant J.C. Penney building generated a lot of positive feedback.

People seem excited by the prospect of the building being on the market and possibly being redeveloped into something other than a dilapidated parcel on the 700 block.

Others thought I should have delved deeper into the building's history, which, I admit, I kind of glossed over. I'm more interested in the building's future than its past – and this column is pretty long already – but I'll devote the final 234 words of this week's installment to fill in the blanks.

Chronicle Columnist and Resident Trivia Master Don Rhodes thought I should have mentioned the building, which was part of the historic Albion Hotel complex, was also the site of Augusta's J.B. White department store.

Indeed, turn-of-the-century photos show the department store occupying the east side of what was once a U-shaped complex that had small shops on the ground floor. Reader Clinton Lewis noted the building could be considered one of Augusta's "first mixed-use" projects.

J.B. White moved to the 900 block after a 1921 fire destroyed the complex's center and west wings. The hotel's former west end was rebuilt as the Richmond Hotel and the former retail space was taken over by Sears, Roebuck & Co., which occupied the building until its free-standing store was built at the corner of 15th Street and Walton Way (the big box is now occupied by Augusta University back-office workers).

J.C. Penney moved into the old Sears space in 1958 and occupied it until 1987, which is why most people in town call 732 Broad St. the "old J.C. Penney building."

But to 88-year-old Raymond Walters, the building will always be the old Sears, because that's where his mother took him to see Santa when he was a child in the 1940s – the golden era of Broad Street department stores.

"We always went to Sears," Walters recalled. "She said that's where the 'real' Santa Claus is."

Reach Damon Cline at (706) 823-3352 or dcline@augustachronicle.com.