M&S tops list of most trustworthy UK retailers despite crippling cyber attack

Marks & Spencer has ranked as the UK’s most trusted retailer in 2025, despite the crippling cyber attack in April and the long-lasting fallout, which forced it to pause orders on its website for almost seven weeks.

That’s according to a survey of 2,000 UK respondents in November 2025 by data and analytics company, GlobalData, which asked them to state the UK retailers that they feel are the most trustworthy. Each respondent could select up to three.

M&S came top with 19%, followed by John Lewis (18%), Tesco and Amazon (both on 16%) and Sainsbury’s (11%).

The difficulty shoppers faced in finding comparable alternatives elsewhere during the cyber attack outage “reinforced perceptions that M&S offers products that are genuinely hard to replace”.
By restoring service and offering customers discounts in the aftermath, M&S further strengthened its reliability and value proposition.

Aliyah Siddika, Associate Retail Analyst at GlobalData, said: “Marks & Spencer’s narrow lead in consumer trust over John Lewis & Partners is not guaranteed to remain in 2026.

“John Lewis & Partners has the infrastructure to communicate its quality and value for money message more clearly with its revived “Never Knowingly Undersold” promise, which could help it overtake Marks & Spencer in the future.

“Notably, John Lewis ranks second despite a smaller store footprint, indicating the strength of its proposition and the potential for further momentum. Marks & Spencer must ensure that it remains committed to its focus on security and promoting its unique, quality focused own-brand to retain shoppers’ trust.”

The survey also showed that high quality products, of which 84% of respondents said were most important, and value for money (81%), underpinned consumer trust, as well as customer service and price promises on products (both 74%), swiftly followed by consistency across stores and online (73%).

Siddika added: “The most trusted UK retailers are those that translate quality and value into clear, customer facing signals. Retailers must offer distinctive, high quality own-brand ranges that feel genuinely hard to replace.

“Shoppers also respond to credible value cues such as Tesco’s Finest range, which, paired with Clubcard prices, makes the quality and value trade-off easy to see at the shelf edge.”