A recent poll has revealed that Marks & Spencer – M&S, the UK high street retailer, is unrivaled when it comes to consumer trust. The poll was carried out by GlobalData.
Apparently, the challenge that shoppers faced in finding comparable alternatives elsewhere during the outage phase reinforced the perceptions that Marks & Spencer indeed offers products that are genuinely hard to get replaced, remarks GlobalData.
Through restoring service and also offering customers discounts in the aftermath, the retailer has gone ahead and further strengthened its dependability along with its value proposition. In order to protect its lead of being first in top five most trusted retailers list in UK, Marks & Spencer has to continue to invest in cyber resilience while at the same time making sure that the quality and value messaging still remain its highest priority.
It is interesting to note that John Lewis & Partners, Tesco, and Amazon, as well as Sainsbury’s, go on to complete the top five most trusted retailers list in UK. Interestingly, four out of the five retailers are British, hence suggesting that the heritage brands go on to benefit due to familiarity and also perceived ownership to UK shoppers. This robust domestic brand identity is one of the major reasons why Marks & Spencer has gone on to retain the much-sought customer confidence and also have limited reputational damage, even due to a cyberattack.
Associate retail analyst with GlobalData, Aliyah Siddika, says that the narrow lead in consumer trust by Marks & Spencer over John Lewis & Partners is not guaranteed to be the same in 2026. John Lewis & Partners, indeed, has the infrastructure to communicate its quality along with its value-for-money message more clearly with the revived Never Knowingly Undersold promise, which could as well help it overtake Marks & Spencer in the times to come. It is worth noting that John Lewis ranks second in spite of a much smaller store footprint as compared to Marks & Spencer, thereby indicating the strength of its proposition and also the potential for more momentum. The fact is that Marks & Spencer has to make sure that it remains committed when it comes to its focus on security and also promoting its distinct, quality-focused own brand so as to retain the trust of shoppers.
Interestingly, the respondents were asked to rate the retailer traits they consider to go on to make a retailer trustworthy.
Consistent quality along with a clear value for money underpin the consumer trust, with notably 84% and 81% of consumers, respectively, hence citing these factors as the leading drivers when it comes to trust in retailers. These aspects go on to reassure the shoppers that a retailer is dependable and fair as well as worth returning to. Trust is elevated when retailers roll out consistently positive experiences through the stores and channels, which are backed by reliable customer service.
Siddika further highlights that the most-trusted UK retailers are the ones that translate quality and value into transparent, customer-facing signals. Retailers have to offer distinctive and high-quality own-brand ranges that feel genuinely pretty hard to replace. Shoppers also respond to certain credible value cues like the Finest range by Tesco, which, paired with Clubcard Prices, goes on to make the quality and value trade-off pretty easy to see at the shelf edge.
