Justin King’s last trading update as Sainsbury’s chief executive saw a disappointing set of results as sales dropped for the second quarter in a row.

Mr King said that customers continued to spend cautiously in a “challenging” market, leading to industry growth in the quarter being the slowest in a decade.

In the 12 weeks to June 7th, like-for-like sales were down 1.1% on a like-for-like basis.

However, Mr King added that, whilst customer spending was likely to remain cautious, Sainsbury’s remains confident that its “clear strategy and differentiated offer” will allow it to “continue to outperform our supermarket peers through the remainder of the year."

Despite the fall, Sainsbury’s results were better than those of rival Tesco, which said last week that like-for-like sales had fallen 4%, its worst quarterly sales figures in 40 years.

Updating the market on Sainsbury’s progress throughout the quarter, Mr King said: “We continue to invest in the quality of our product offer. Own-brand remains a key point of difference, with our Taste the Difference range performing particularly strongly in the quarter, with sales up nearly 10%. This Easter we launched our first by Sainsbury's Easter eggs, more than doubling our own-brand market share to 40%. We also successfully completed the trial of our first in-store scratch bakery in a convenience store and we continue to support British farmers by using British flour and cream in the one million products we bake from scratch every day.

“At the same time service levels in our stores remain industry leading. Strong availability throughout the day, combined with great in store standards and colleague engagement with our customers serves to highlight our differentiated offer. We are delighted that these high service levels have again been recognised, winning the Grocer 33 Customer Service and Availability Awards for the second year in a row.”