Whether they’re active duty, Reserve or retired, respondents to a survey by the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission have very similar — and high — satisfaction levels with the savings and other features offered by their commissaries.
At least 75 percent of respondents in each military demographic said they are “very satisfied or satisfied” with their commissary savings, and at least 81 percent are “very satisfied or satisfied” with their commissary features, such as convenience, product assortment, name brand selection, sense of military community, and the introduction of store brands.
But because of the way the survey was conducted, only 3,208 active-duty members — less than 12 percent of the 27,523 active-duty members who responded to the survey — were asked about their satisfaction with their commissary savings. A higher percentage — 23 percent, or 6,433 active-duty members — were asked about their satisfaction with commissary features.
Survey respondents were asked questions only about benefits that they had identified as being of higher relative importance to them, according to commission officials.
“Many of the survey questions were focused on pay, retirement, health care and education so the relative importance of commissaries to respondents is low, despite being a valued benefit,” a commission official stated.
Karen Golden, deputy director for government relations for military family issues with the Military Officers Association of America, said the high satisfaction rates with commissaries is no surprised to her, based on what she hears from families.
She speculated that the commissary’s relatively low importance to the other two-thirds to 88 percent who were never asked about that specific benefit may be related to the fact that a current or retired service member took the survey, not that member’s spouse.
“The service member, who is mobile and deploying, may not be the primary person who shops in the commissary,” she said, adding that MOAA has heard from some of its members who took the survey and expressed frustration at being asked to “rack and stack” their benefits in such fashion.
According to the commission’s report, the highest-ranked compensation feature among active-duty members surveyed was “retiree annuity as percent of pay,” with a score of 5.3 on a scale of 0 to 10. At the bottom of the list of 24 benefits was “child care off/on post,” with a score of 2.87.
Commissary savings, with a score of 3.64, was the fifth-lowest in importance; “commissary benefit features” ranked one rung higher, with a score of 3.72.
After about 18 months of study, the commission unveiled 15 recommendations related to various areas of pay and compensation. Part of their work was a survey conducted last July through October, along with town hall meetings and other public forums to hear from military community members, ranging from troops to advocacy groups to a number of experts in a variety of areas.
Among the recommendations was that DoD consolidate the commissaries and exchange systems into a single resale system for all back-end operation above individual store level.
Those surveyed expressed a strong preference for having the commissary and exchange in the same location or the same store. The commission did not specifically recommend creating superstores with a combined commissary and exchange, but did not preclude that possibility.
Officials also looked at the perceived value that service members, reservists and retirees attach to various levels of commissary savings. For example, active-duty families with children valued a 10 percent commissary savings at “0”; a 15 percent discount at $559 a year; 20 percent at $1,233 a year; and 25 percent at $1,654 a year.
They value the current 30-percent average savings at $1,954 a year, and a 35 percent savings would bump them up to $3,035 a year.
More than 155,000 people took part in the survey, which the commission sent to a random sample of 457,033 active-duty and reserve members, and to nearly 1.3 million military retirees.
Of the 22,079 reservists who responded, 3,217, or 15 percent, were asked questions about their satisfaction with commissary savings, while 32 percent of the 105,953 retirees who took the survey were asked about commissary savings.
