UK: Waitrose’s customer director, Martin George, is set to depart after five years in the role

Waitrose is looking for a new customer director as Martin George, who helmed the role for five years is exploring “non-executive” roles elsewhere. George’s appointment was announced back in May 2017 and he can be credited for an on-demand grocery delivery deal with Deliveroo, the Christmas spot in 2019 titled “Excitable Edgar” – which brought Waitrose and John Lewis together for the year’s Christmas campaign, among other things.

So how did Waitrose perform under George?

According to YouGov BrandIndex - which tracks consumer sentiment towards thousands of brands daily – during George’s tenure Consideration and Current Customer scores dipped. Where in 2017 Current Customer stood at 16% when George took over, it has settled at 13.2% in July 2022. Similarly, Consideration has gone from 21.7% in 2017 to 19% in July 2022.

While the metric scores seem to have dipped overall, the retailer managed a post-lockdown recovery. George’s replacement will have to sustain this recovery, at the very least, as retail wars heat up amid the cost-of-living crisis.

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Methodology: YouGov BrandIndex collects data on thousands of brands every day. Waitrose’s Consideration and Current Customer scores are delivered as a percentage. The scores are based on an average daily sample size of 2576.1 UK adults for the Consideration metric and 2576.1 UK adults for the Current Customer metric between May 2017 and July 2022. Figures are based on a four-week moving average. Learn more about BrandIndex.