It’s been an eventful fortnight for department stores. Hot on the heels of Harvey Nichols’ acquisition by Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group, John Lewis managing director Peter Ruis has announced his departure amid “really tough trading conditions”. The news has been reported with a degree of surprise, given the executive’s relatively short tenure and his forward-facing commentary about expanding and rebooting the chain less than a year ago.
But has the outgoing MD left John Lewis in good health, or at a Ruis end? Data from YouGov BrandIndex shows that, at the beginning of his tenure on 15 January 2024, Impression scores – a measure of a brand’s positive and negative sentiment – sat at 48.7. Over Ruis’ tenure, they reached a height of 51.9 (19 January 2026), and a low point of 46.3 (28 April 2024), with the most recent scores settling around 49.0: a +0.3 improvement on when he took the job.
Ruis’ time as John Lewis CEO started with Quality scores at 57.6, peaking at 60.9 (19 January 2026), with a nadir of 56.8 (22 June 2025). The most recent scores for this metric sit at 18.2. Value scores, a metric that may be of particular interest in a cost-of-living crisis, sat at 16.1 on 15 January 2024; fell to a low of 13.3 on 27 April 2024, and peaked at 20.5 on 22 December 2024. They never reached these highs or lows again over Ruis’ time in the MD seat, and as of our most recent data, were 18.2: 2.1 points ahead of where they were when he took the job.
Scores measuring consumer Consideration were at 40.3 at the outset of Ruis’ tenure; reaching a high of 44.2 on 23 January 2025, and a low of 36.9 by 2 July of that same year. As of 16 August 2026, scores are at 40.0.
Index scores, which measure overall brand health by combining several measures, perhaps paint the most telling picture. They were at 40.9 when Ruis started the job; hit a low of 40.1 by 28 April 2024; a high of 44.3 by 7 February 2025; and were at 42.6 as of our most recent data.
In terms of public opinion, it would perhaps be hard to call this period a roaring success or an outright failure. Rather, it appears to have been a time of modest highs, modest lows, and, ultimately, some modest improvements while trading conditions were less than ideal.
Methodology
YouGov BrandIndex tracks daily perceptions of thousands of brands. Scores are reported as net scores from –100 to +100, based on daily UK surveys weighted by age, gender, region, social grade, and ethnicity.