The cyberattack M&S has been battling for more than a week has impacted availability of products in stores, the retailer has said.
Taking systems offline has led to “pockets of limited availability in some stores”, M&S acknowledged this morning.
The Grocer revealed on Monday that staff were reporting deliveries to stores had been reduced, with the bestselling lines prioritised.
M&S has also been forced to pause deliveries of some packaged food items to Ocado, according to The Guardian.
The attack was yesterday linked to hacking group Scattered Spider, which includes teenagers, known for using sophisticated ‘social engineering’ techniques to infiltrate company systems, such as phoning staff members posing as IT support.
M&S stopped taking online orders via both its website and app last week, having first informed customers of the attack on Tuesday.
Daily charity donations of surplus food from stores have also been impacted.
“As part of our proactive management of the incident, we took a decision to take some of our systems temporarily offline,” an M&S spokesperson said today. “As a result, we currently have pockets of limited availability in some stores. We are working hard to get availability back to normal across the estate.”
M&S grocery sales grew by 14.4% year on year in the 12 weeks to 20 April, according to Kantar data published yesterday – faster than any other UK supermarket.
However, experts warn some of M&S’s recent grocery sales success could be undone by the disruption of the cyber attack, particularly if it leads to poor availability in stores.
Jonathon Monger, joint MD of Amplify Retail Execution, said: “We know that for every sale lost due to poor availability, you are likely to lose further future sales as consumer loyalty is eroded.
“It is clear from a number of store visits I have carried out this week that M&S are seeing on-shelf availability issues, so retaining consumer loyalty will be a very real concern for them.”
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