As consumer shopping behaviors become more fragmented in 2025, the path to purchase is no longer linear and brands must adapt to stay ahead.
Consumers today are no longer giving their attention or money to a singular brand or retailer as previous generations did. Instead, today’s consumer shops around and across various retailers to find the best product for them.
In fact, the InMarket Index found that a single retailer makes up less than 0.5% of a shopper’s total retail visits. As rising costs continue to impact consumer spending across the board, shoppers are more likely to shop sales, consider a trade down and frequent more stores to save money and find better value.
Amidst this uncertainty, one often overlooked group holds the key to unlocking long-term incremental growth: themovable middle.
Advertisement
Who is the ‘Movable Middle’ Consumer and Why do They Matter?
The movable middle makes up 50% of a brand’s shoppers who account for approximately 20% of spend with a brand, but 40% of the overall category spend — a.k.a. they’re a significant group of consumers who frequently buy within your category but aren’t choosing your brand most of the time.
While marketers often focus on acquiring new customers and growing the loyalty of their best customers – the top 25% who typically spend the most – the movable middle represents a large and often overlooked segment. Because these consumers arenot quite yet locked into you – or your competitors – the movable middle shopper is often highly receptive to persuasive and relevant marketing. Brands that take the time to understand who these consumers are and why they shop (including what best motivates them) have an opportunity to drive incremental sales and nurture them into long-term brand advocates and loyalists.
How to Dominate the Movable Middle Market Share
Understanding where the movable middle shops and what impacts their purchase decisions is key to targeting this group effectively. It’s essential to dive deeper into these insights, looking across intent, location and purchase data, to understand why the movable middle is choosing different brands. Is it due to better quality, price with deals and discounts, enhanced product value, availability or a combination of all of these attributes?
Brands and retailers that analyze these behaviors and unlock the core motivations behind these purchase decisions can craft personalized marketing strategies and creative programs that better connect with these consumers and turn them from occasional buyers into repeat customers.
These enhanced insights also can help marketers take their campaigns to the next level with full-funnel strategies, integrating both top and bottom of the funnel tactics to break through the intense competition. Top-of-the-funnel strategies – those focused on awareness and consideration – should work alongside bottom-of-the-funnel activities, which are focused on conversion. This ensures you are connecting with consumers throughout their purchase journey, including up to the moment they reach for your brand or product on the shelf, or when they add it to a cart.
Let’s look at a retailer, for example, that is perhaps looking to promote its new private label brand. After analyzing that the movable middle was choosing other brands due to quality and other flavors, the retailer created new ad experiences to double down on messaging and creatives that emphasize how quality, flavor and taste are core to their new product line – all to reach the movable middle.
This can include mouthwatering CTV experiences highlighting the new offerings, social influencer ads to build additional trust and immersive mobile experiences offering recipes or coupons for first-time buyers to pique their interest of movable middle shoppers as they enter the store. Combined, these efforts can help not only capture their attention but win the purchase.
This example also raises another key point about reaching the movable middle: it’s critical to target them where and when it matters most. For most, the 24-48 hours before a consumer’s next shopping trip is pivotal to drive consideration. Through social media and other digital platforms, the retailer mentioned can push this new, engaging mobile ad when a movable middle is shopping in-store for that final touch point. For some of InMarket’s clients, this orchestration can drive performance and an increase in engagement rates on the in-store message as high as 85%, versus messages only received when entering the store.
The Big Opportunity in 2025
In 2025, the movable middle represents a critical opportunity for brands. With a data-driven, personalized approach, brands and retailers can turn this group into loyal advocates, driving long-term success. To start, this includes understanding who these consumers are and what motivates them, focusing on key competitors and your unique selling proposition (taste, quality, price, rewards, etc.), building programs that encourage frequency, volume-based or habitual purchases to drive adoption, usage, value and loyalty, and connecting with consumers on a more personalized basis through creative, orchestrated messaging throughout the purchase process.
Leveraging technology that allows you to optimize these programs in flight and measure their success via incremental sales lift and actionable insights will then help you build on this focused effort by cultivating stronger connections that translate into lasting growth.
In a world where consumer behavior is fragmented and loyalty is increasingly difficult to achieve, understanding and engaging the movable middle will be the differentiator for brands seeking to thrive in the marketplace.
Michael Della Penna is Chief Strategy Officer at InMarket. He has over 30 years of experience working in the data, digital advertising and marketing industry. Previously, Della Penna served as Chief Revenue and Growth Officer at Cuebiq, where he built and led the sales, customer success and supply partnerships teams. Prior to Cuebiq, he served as Group VP, Oracle Marketing Cloud and SVP of Emerging Channels at Responsys, until its $1.5 billion dollar acquisition by Oracle in 2014. Prior to Oracle and Responsys, he founded Conversa Marketing, a social CRM company that was acquired by StrongView (now Selligent) in 2010. Della Penna’s other notable senior positions include Chief Marketing Officer at Epsilon, CMO at Bigfoot Interactive, VP of Strategic Development at CNET Networks, Inc., and VP, Marketing at ZDNet. He has been recognized as one of B-to-B Magazines “100 Most Influential People in Business-to-Business and Interactive Marketing” five times for his ongoing contributions to establishing digital marketing best practices.
