Instead, they will spend less on dish detergent and diapers at Wal-Mart, to compensate in their household budget. Perhaps watching Martha Stewart convinced the consumer of the value of such unique additions to the home. They may also buy Martha's towels in loyalty to her image of fine living at K-Mart. Now, even K-Mart proudly boasts Martha's up-scale products, as it too trades up in with the aim to dominate a wider and more affluent market segment. The title of the book refers to the fact that middle-class households are spending differently and target themselves...

Households cut back on some purchases to trade up, or to buy more status-conscious goods in other market sectors. Thus, traditional market segmentation of a uniformly 'middle class' consumer uninterested in high-quality goods no longer holds / Consumers can be persuaded that a more expensive electronic system has better quality than a cheaper system and that the use of a maid service may be worth the time they save cleaning their own homes. What was once high status is now more affordable.