Welcome to August’s Strategy Pulse. Most of the country’s on the back-to-school run and retailers are gearing up for one of the busiest spending windows of the year. But the interesting story this month isn’t about total spend. It’s about who’s spending it.

PwC‘s latest Retail Outlook describes it as a K-shaped recovery: one group of shoppers has headroom and is starting to loosen up, another is still watching every pound. Same shop, same shelf, two completely different customers. That’s not a demographic footnote. It’s a strategy problem, because most retail operating models are still built for one customer, not two.

Big Shift: One Shop, Two Customers

The K in K-shaped recovery isn’t new language, but the shape of it has changed. PwC’s 2026 outlook found consumers are firmly in control of their spending, shaped heavily by the cost of living, with a clear split between those who have financial headroom and those who don’t. Retailers who move quickly on that reality, using value, experience and technology to reach each group differently, are the ones PwC expects to gain ground this year. (Retail Bulletin)

Here’s the bit that makes it a genuine strategy problem rather than a segmentation exercise. National Retail Federation‘s research with Bain & Company‘s Pyxis unit found the 2026 K-shape looks different to 2025’s. Where the 2025 data showed falling spend across most lower-income segments, the first half of 2026 shows none of the cohorts actually cutting back. The bottom of the K is holding up. The top is still pulling ahead. Which means retailers can’t treat this as a temporary squeeze to ride out. Both ends of the market are staying, and they want different things at the same time.

This is where it stops being a marketing question and becomes an org design one. Serving a value shopper and a premium shopper well requires different supply chains, different store formats, different pricing logic, and increasingly, different people running each of them. A buying team built to negotiate the sharpest possible unit cost isn’t the same team you want curating a premium range. Retailers now need both, inside the same P&L, reporting to the same board.

📌 Takeaway: The K-shaped consumer isn’t a forecasting quirk. It’s forcing retailers to run two different businesses under one roof, and most org charts haven’t caught up.

Brand in Focus: Tesco

Tesco is a decent illustration of a retailer trying to play both ends at once. On the value side, it’s launching on quick commerce platforms Uber Eats and Deliveroo, with shoppers able to access Clubcard prices and earn points through either app. That’s a bet on convenience and immediacy, not just price.

At the same time, its main rival’s moves show how tight the margin for error is here. Asda‘s shift from its Rollback pricing campaign toward what it’s calling the Asda Price strategy is entering its final stages, with heavier use of multibuy promotions, a sign that headline low prices alone aren’t pulling in the sales growth needed, and that basket size now matters as much as unit price. (Retail Sector)

Tesco’s Clubcard and quick commerce push is really an attempt to hold the value shopper close while giving the retailer new terrain (speed, delivery, app-based loyalty) to compete on with everyone else. The interesting tension is whether one loyalty scheme and one brand can credibly serve both the shopper counting every pound and the one adding a Deliveroo order on top of their weekly shop, without either one feeling like an afterthought.

📌 Takeaway: Loyalty schemes built for one type of shopper are being asked to stretch across two. That’s a harder job than it looks from the outside.

Consulting Corner: Advising the Bifurcated Business

Retail strategy consultancies are increasingly being asked to build two playbooks per client instead of one. PwC UK’s retail lead, Jacqueline Windsor, put it plainly: retailers are navigating competing investment demands, reinforcing value credentials in the short term while transforming their business models in the medium term, and those who adapt quickly to a K-shaped reality will be best placed to gain ground.

That’s consultant language for: don’t pick a lane, build two lanes and staff them properly. The firms doing well here (Bain, McKinsey & Company, and specialists like OC&C Strategy Consultants and Simon-Kucher on pricing) are the ones treating this as a workforce and capability question, not just a pricing model. If a retailer needs a genuinely different operating rhythm for its value tier and its premium tier, that shows up in headcount, in hiring briefs, and in who reports to whom. Recruitment for retail strategy roles is starting to reflect that split too, with briefs asking for either sharp commercial efficiency thinking or premium brand and experience thinking, rarely both from the same hire.

📌 Takeaway: Advising a K-shaped retailer means building two operating models, not tweaking one. The firms winning this work understand it’s a people problem as much as a pricing one.

🔔 Final Thought

Retailers have spent years being told to know their customer. August’s question is sharper: which customer, on which day, buying which basket. Two shoppers, two sets of expectations, one org chart trying to hold it all together. The businesses that work this out first won’t just price better. They’ll hire better, because they’ll actually know which team they’re building and why.

Want to stay on top of this? The Strategy Pulse continues monthly. In the meantime, if you found this useful, share it with someone trying to build one team for two very different customers.