Roy Morgan's Michele Levine says Australian retail has split into premium and value, with the middle dying. The same squeeze is hitting SaaS, services, hospitality and trades. When a customer cannot say what you stand for, price becomes the only thing left to judge you on, and there is always someone cheaper.
Broad appeal is not a market position. It is the absence of one.
The Take: The middle of the market is the most dangerous place an Australian brand can stand right now. Premium gives a customer a reason to choose you. Value gives them one too. The middle leaves them with price alone to go on, and price is the one contest where there is always someone willing to lose money faster than you can.
Why has the middle become the worst place to be?
Because the pressure on Australian households is not spread evenly. In June 2026, 48.7% of mortgage holders on incomes below $100,000 were in extreme mortgage stress, against 11.3% of those earning above it.
Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine told a retail conference in Sydney this month that the market has split into two lanes that both work, with a gap between them that does not. Her line, reported by Mumbrella, was blunt: if a retailer is too expensive to be valued and not distinctive enough to be premium, customers have better options on both sides.
Read that as a retail story and you miss the point. The same split is running through SaaS, professional services, hospitality and the trades. The marketplaces reset the baseline. Once Amazon, Temu and Shein taught shoppers what range, price and delivery could be, every category inherited the same expectation.
Picture two platforms with a wire strung between them. One platform is premium. The other is value. The middle is the wire, and there is nothing beneath it but price.
What actually holds a brand up?
On the premium platform you stand on identity, craft, service and expertise. Levine pointed to Mecca, Lululemon, Paspaley and R.M.Williams as brands that win there, because a customer can finish the sentence "I buy this because...". On the value platform you stand on price, scale and a promise the business model is built to keep. She named Bunnings, Kmart, Aldi and Amazon. The same test applies. A shopper knows exactly what they are getting and why it is cheap.
Both platforms hand the customer a fast answer to one question. What is this for, and why this one. The wire in the middle hands them nothing to hold. So they reach for the only rail left within grabbing distance, which is the price tag.
That rail feels solid until a competitor strings a lower one. When consumer confidence is stuck at 74.7, a deeply depressed reading, customers stop buying on trust and start buying on proof. Every line item gets audited. A brand that competes on "a bit better than the cheap one, a bit cheaper than the good one" is asking to be audited on the only axis it has left.
The gap between that 48.7% and that 11.3% is the whole argument. The pressure is asymmetric. Half of lower-income mortgage holders are counting every dollar, which makes them ruthless value buyers. The households above the line still have room to pay for something they actually want. Two very different customers, pulling toward two very different platforms. Neither of them is standing in the middle waiting for you.
Which side should you actually pick?
The honest answer is that most owners I speak to have already picked without admitting it. Their pricing says value. Their brand story says premium. Their margins say neither is working. A wire is a thing you cross, not a place you set up house.
The same buyer will happily be a value shopper in one category and a premium shopper in the next. She buys her cleaning products at Aldi and her skincare at Mecca in the same afternoon, and she is not confused. She knows what each brand is for. The businesses in trouble are the ones that cannot answer that for themselves, so they try to be a little bit of both and end up being neither.
Australian mortgage holders were extremely at risk of stress in the six months to June 2026, up from 16.7% in December 2025
How this shows up in the businesses we score
Across the Australian businesses New Rebellion scores, Brand and Positioning is consistently one of the six weakest dimensions. The pattern is hard to unsee once you know it. The businesses that score worst on positioning are almost always the ones that describe themselves in the broadest terms. "Quality service at a fair price." "The trusted partner for all your needs." Copy that could belong to a plumber, a law firm or a payroll platform.
That vagueness is not a wording problem to fix later. It is the tell. A brand describes itself in broad terms precisely because it has not decided which platform it is standing on, and the customer feels that hesitation long before they read the tagline.
Our methodology scores Brand and Positioning on machine-readable signals where we can, and a directional read where the evidence is thinner, because clarity of positioning is partly a judgement call. If you want the method rather than the marketing, it is set out in how we score.
When a customer cannot say what you stand for, they will decide with the only number on the page.
What I would do about it
Start with one sentence. Not a mission statement, a positioning sentence: "We are the [premium or value] choice for [specific customer] because [the one thing you do better than anyone in that lane]." If you cannot write it without three "ands", you are still on the wire.
Then pressure-test your pricing against that sentence. If the sentence says premium and your discounting says value, one of them is lying. The customer already knows which.
Cut the audience. A brand built for the whole market gets priced by the whole market against every cheaper rival. Pick the customer who would miss you if you disappeared and build for them first.
Finally, look at where your competitors are standing. If the premium platform in your category is crowded, value may be the open ground. The reverse is just as true. The mistake is assuming the middle is safe because it is empty. It is empty for a reason.
The middle was never a place to build. It was a wire to cross. Pick a side to stand on before the market picks one for you, because the pull toward price only gets stronger from here. That is my read, not a forecast. Reasonable operators will disagree. Working out which platform you belong on, and what it honestly costs to stand there, is the work we do inside NR Studio.
Frequently asked questions
Is the premium versus value split only a retail issue?
No. Levine's comments were about retail, but the same dynamic shows up in SaaS, professional services, hospitality and the trades. Any category where a customer can easily compare a cheap option and a premium one on the same screen faces the squeeze.
Does being cheap count as a real position?
Yes, if the business model is built to keep the promise. Aldi and Kmart win on price because their whole operation is engineered around it. Being cheap by discounting a premium cost base is not a position, it is a slow way to erode margin.
How do I know if my brand is stuck in the middle?
Try to write one sentence that names your lane, your customer and the one thing you do better than anyone in that lane. If you cannot do it without hedging, your customers cannot either, which is why they fall back to price.
What is the fastest way to move off the middle?
Narrow the audience before you touch anything else. A sharper customer definition forces clarity on pricing, message and product. It is cheaper to change than a full rebrand.