AGRE also participates in developing residential real estate for high and lower middle-income customers, as well as developing commercial and hotel properties and developed land.

Mr. Mitchell said Rhodes catered mainly to middle-income customers in shopping centers in the Southeast.

Through a string of acquisitions, Conseco grew to become one of the country's biggest life and health insurance companies, catering to low- and middle-income customers.

Ms. Roberts says that lower- and middle-income customers need new machines and new exercises just as wealthier ones do.

The mall, aimed at middle-income customers and the largest in Racine County, had sales of over $100 million as of 2004.

While this was an old strategy for appealing to those with dreams of upper-class status, the ad copy explicitly addressed middle-income customers.

The problem, he said, is that a neighborhood needs a minimum number of small businesses and middle-income customers for a bank to turn a profit.

On the other hand, financial service companies that are also distributors have what the manufacturers want: access to middle-income customers.

That customer is more of a middle-income customer.

"They need to get committed to the middle-income customer," said Gary Balter, a retail analyst for UBS, who said the effort may "mean some near-term sacrifice."