M&S boss Stuart Machin has said the supermarket is “determined to focus on value” this year as customer sentiment “remains flat”.

The upmarket retailer, which saw food sales jump 8.7% to £2.5bn in the third quarter and recorded its “biggest ever day” for food sales, said it has increased the cost of its products “behind the market” for the past two years and intends to the same this year.

Machin explains: “We have got some cost headwinds coming our way through the supply base, but we want to absolutely minimise passing that through to customers, both in food and in clothing, and we’re still very focused on that volume growth.”

While he says that it “hasn’t been easy” for the business, he does see “cautious customer confidence” out there.

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It comes off the back of a “strong” Christmas trading period for M&S, when customers were “slightly more optimistic”, according to Machin.

Over the period, M&S was the top performing store-based grocery retailer in volume and value, according to Kantar, while its ‘Remarksable’ value range delivered a 14% rise in sales.

Tesco, which also posted record breaking Christmas sales today, said that January has proven to be “intensely competitive” in the grocery sector as consumers “tighten their pockets” post-Christmas period.

The supermarket’s chief executive Ken Murphy stated that it is “working very hard to earn the basket” this month as “the whole customer sentiment tightens up”.