Your 'UK consumer' does not exist.

There is no such thing as “the UK consumer” anymore.

This week’s Centre for Cities report, covered in the Guardian, is a gift to anyone who cares about local marketing.

Eleven towns and cities in the UK including Warrington, Barnsley and Wakefield have seen disposable incomes rise twice as fast as the rest of urban Britain over the past decade. Between 2013 and 2023, disposable income in these places rose by an average of 5.2%, compared with 2.4% for urban areas overall.

Brighton is up 8.1%, Worthing 7.8%, London 5.8%. At the same time, places like Cambridge have actually seen real disposable incomes fall, even with all their economic success.

If you are still talking about “the UK consumer” as if they are one thing, you are already behind.

National averages hide local realities

One of the most striking lines in the report is that if all 63 of the UK’s largest towns and cities had matched the income growth of the top 11, people would have been £3,200 better off on average.

That is not just an economic story, it is a marketing story.

National averages smooth all of this out. On a slide, “average disposable income growth” looks modest and manageable. On the ground, you have:

     • Towns where workplace wages and disposable income are growing strongly, with new high skill jobs in sectors like software, marketing and finance.

     • Cities where headline economic growth is strong but housing costs and other pressures mean people feel worse off, not better.

If your brand strategy, your media plan and your “UK persona” are built around the average, you are designing for nowhere in particular.

Warrington is not “just another northern town”

Warrington had the highest total economic growth of any of the top 11 locations, at 41%. Since 2013, both economic and disposable income growth there have been 2.2 times the national average. It is the town in the north of England with the highest disposable income, and the only town or city in that part of the country to have workplace wages above the UK average.

Yet in many national brand plans, Warrington still sits in a catch all “North West” or “Tier 2” bucket.

From a local marketing perspective, that is a missed opportunity. If you have a store, a branch or a delivery catchment in Warrington, you are sitting in the middle of an outlier market. Treating it like any other northern town is not just lazy, it is value destroying.

The same is true, in different ways, for Brighton, Worthing, Barnsley and the rest of the top 11. Each of them has its own economic story, sector mix and local identity that shapes how people think, spend and respond to brands.

What this means for multi location brands

If there is no single “UK consumer”, then there is no single “right” local plan. For multi location brands, I would take three very practical steps off the back of this report.

1. Rebuild your market segmentation around local economics, not just population

Most location strategies still start with population, store count and historic sales. Those matter, but they are not enough.

     • Add local disposable income growth, workplace wage trends and sector mix into your segmentation.

     • Identify which of your towns look more like Warrington and Brighton, and which look more like Cambridge right now.

     • Treat those as different portfolios, not one blurred market.

You do not need perfect data science to start. Even a simple view of “growth”, “steady” and “struggling” markets is more honest than pretending everyone has moved in lockstep.

2. Stop rolling out one UK playbook

If every town gets the same campaign with a logo swap and a different photo of the high street, you are not doing local marketing, you are doing localisation admin.

In growth markets, where incomes and confidence are rising:

     • Dial up brand building and long term activity.

     • Test more premium propositions and bundles.

     • Invest in local partnerships, experiences and community presence.

In pressured markets, where incomes are flat or falling:

     • Focus more on genuine value, not just national price promotions.

     • Use local insight to understand what “support” really means in that context.

     • Consider adjusting product mix, pack sizes or services to fit the reality of people’s lives.

The Centre for Cities report is tough on governments that keep “tinkering with symptoms” of the cost of living crisis instead of addressing the underlying growth challenge.

There is a parallel in marketing. If we only respond with more short term discounting, and do not adapt our local strategies to where growth actually is, we are tinkering too.

3. Empower your local teams to act on what they see

Head office can supply the data and the frameworks, but your local teams see the reality in real time.

     • Give them a clear picture of where their town sits economically.

     • Set broad guardrails at national level, then allow flexibility in channel mix, messaging and partnerships locally.

     • Create simple feedback loops so that what they learn in Warrington or Barnsley can inform what you do nationally.

The places in this report did not grow by accident. Councils made deliberate, sometimes difficult choices about land use, infrastructure, housing and skills.

Brands need the same level of intent in how they show up locally.

The real question for 2026

The big question this research poses to marketers is simple:

When you say “our UK customer”, whose reality are you actually talking about?

If your answer quietly assumes that Warrington, Brighton, Barnsley and Cambridge all look and feel the same, then this is the moment to redraw your map.

I would love to hear from other marketers and local leaders,

     • How are you factoring local economic divergence into your plans for 2026

     • Which towns in your network are quietly becoming your real growth markets