Sutcliffe, who is head of innovation and offer at the market research group, was talking during a panel session called ‘Hidden dangers, trust in a connected world’ at the MRS annual conference, Impact 2018.

He was joined onstage by panellists including the marketing chief of Nationwide and ITV’s research boss.

The session hinged on the findings of MRS think tank The Delphi Group’s new report into how tech is affecting trust in brands.

Regarding incoming data law GDPR and ‘open banking', both of which hand greater control to consumers about how companies have access to and use their personal data, Sutcliffe said that some people when given the opportunity to withhold their information will do so.

"Unless businesses and organisations can show that it’s not a benefit to withhold data and that there are benefits to providing it, I think the percentage will be higher," he said.

MRS’s report, Great expectations: How technology imparts consumer trust is published just two months before the UK’s data laws are replaced by GDPR, which essentially lets consumers decide what data companies have access to.

The study draws on research from Kantar and Lightspeed Research and found that Amazon scored the highest average across all consumer trust expectations.

Sara Bennison, Nationwide’s chief marketing officer, was asked about how her customers felt about ‘open banking'.

"They haven't got anything to think about until the propositions come about," she said. "The thing that’s really challenging in the financial services sector is on the one hand that ‘open banking’ launches, and the narrative is to share data openly from one place to another almost at the same time that GDPR comes. It’s really confusing to explain how those things work together."

For Rufus Radcliffe, ITV’s group marketing and research director, consumers are willing to share their data so long as there is something in it for them.

"We find that for young viewers, as long as they get a value exchange, they're happy," said Rufus Radcliffe. "If they, for example, give us email addresses and we push mobile notifications to them about who the contestants on Love Island will be, that’s a genuine utility and we'e earned the right to send to them."