Waitrose narrowly beat its sister company John Lewis

Verdict Research asked 6,000 shoppers to rate shops on range, convenience, quality, price, service, ambience, facilities and layout.

Waitrose came out ahead of John Lewis, which topped the poll in 2006.

Swedish furniture giant Ikea came in third, with improving scores for its ambience and facilities, followed by online retailer Amazon.

TOP OF THE SHOPS 1 Waitrose 2 John Lewis 3 IKEA 4 Amazon 5 TK Maxx 6 H&M 7 Play.com 8 Dunelm 9 Primark 10 JD Sports Source: Verdict Research

Fashion retailer TK Maxx is down two places from 2006 in fifth place, scoring highly on price, quality, ambience and facilities.

A big riser is JD Sports, which makes it into this year's top 10, having come in at number 53 last year.

The authors of the report put its improvement down to the way it has rebranded its stores to give them a clearer focus on fashion.

H&M, play.com and the homewares retailer Dunelm all make it into the survey for the first time.

The retailers included are based on the places that shoppers polled say they visit regularly.