Retailers and suppliers relying on shopper models based on traditional life stages and households are losing touch with shopper needs, according to new IGD research.
The report, ‘How life moments redraw grocery growth’, finds that longstanding assumptions about how people progress through adulthood do not reflect the realities of modern life, with major implications for how businesses design propositions.
IGD’s research highlights that longer lives, delayed milestones, and more diverse household structures are weakening the predictive power of established shopper models. Instead, businesses should focus on key “life moments”: points where people’s routines, responsibilities or identities change significantly.
Life stages are less predictable
Laura Jacobson, retail futures senior partner at IGD, said: “Traditional shopper models no longer work. Shopper needs now vary more within generations than between them, and routines change more often. If retailers and suppliers continue to design around traditional life stages and households, they will lose sight of where spend is actually moving.”
IGD’s analysis shows that shoppers are living increasingly nonlinear lives: younger adults are reaching independence later; more people across midlife are supporting both children and ageing parents; and older generations are living longer but with more years in poorer health.
At the same time, identities and household structures are diversifying, while rapid adoption of new technologies is accelerating behavioural shifts across all age groups.
These combined forces, IGD warns, mean that assumptions about demographics are an unreliable guide for category planning, marketing strategy, and store design.
Growth moves in moments
The report identifies that the most significant shifts in loyalty, category entry and spend now occur during transitions that prompt shoppers to reassess how they live and what they prioritise. These are the “life moments” and there are three kinds which IGD says are most influential:
- Formation moments: when entirely new needs, identities or responsibilities emerge, such as living independently for the first time.
- Disruption moments: when established routines break or no longer serve the shopper, such as with divorce.
- Reinvention moments when shoppers intentionally reset how they live, spend or care for themselves or others, such as a lifestyle redesign.
During these significant changes, shoppers are more open to replacing brands, retailers or longheld habits, making them increasingly decisive battlegrounds for commercial growth.
Windows of opportunity
With grocery markets around the world experiencing slow volume growth and rising cost pressures, the report stresses that retail’s winners and losers will be increasingly decided by which organisations most effectively “show up” for shoppers when their circumstances shift.
“Life moments create windows of opportunity,” Jacobson said. “The winners will identify the moments they can credibly own and define where variation – not one size fits all – genuinely adds value. The rest risk experiencing the gradual drift that happens when businesses don’t show up for customers in the moments that matter.”
The full report, ‘How life moments redraw grocery growth’, is available now on the IGD website for IGD Retail Analysis subscribers.
A free preview of the report is also available for non-subscribers.
