London, Sept 15 - Justin King, chief executive of Britain's third biggest supermarket chain J Sainsbury , said that consumer sentiment was worse than it has ever been going into Christmas, the FT reported on Monday.
King said in an interview with the Financial Times that customers believed "things are worse than they really are" and are beginning to change their shopping habits.
"The business environment is tough (but) there have probably been Christmases in the last 20 years which were right into the middle and teeth of not just a technical recession but four, five, six quarters of recession," said King.
"But if you are asking about whether sentiment is worse than it has ever been, yes I think it is," he said.
King said he had been painted a bit in the past six months as the most positive business person in the country.
"I don't consider myself to be a ridiculously positive person but ... we have an incredible habit of talking ourselves into a worse place than we are in," he said.
King said his fellow retail executives had done little to help the mindset of shoppers with their gloomy commentary.
The Financial Times said King was trying to respond by adding products to Sainsbury's Basics range, which was growing more than 20 percent a year as shoppers look for cheaper food.
The newspaper said Sainsbury's was relaunching its main own label range this autumn in an effort to get shoppers to switch from branded lines.
"We are changing our offer to where our consumers are," said King.