Let’s face it, Big Data is a growing phenomenon in the current technological climate but what are companies doing with it, and do they realise that they even have it?
Data is the new oil. Companies now need to think of new and innovative ways of breathing life into their businesses by using the data that’s already there.
What is the purpose of this?
It’s simple; understanding your consumers will help grow your business.
How do you do this?
One way of understanding your consumers is knowing their position in the socioeconomic hierarchy. This means assigning a Living Standard Measurement (LSM) to them. The LSM scoring methodology in South Africa summarises a bunch of unconnected nice-to-have items and attaches this to a household. This then categorises an individual with a certain score based on the household they live in. As a result, they are ranked on a scale of 1 (being the lowest standard of living) to 10 (being the highest). How correct is this, though? Are marketers targeting a household or real consumers with actual wants and needs? All of this might have been relevant in the 1980’s or early 90’s pre-apartheid, but looking at our evolving world, is it still applicable or even acceptable?
A new form of segmentation is here…
The digital sector of the Blake business holds a massive data set. With this, we’ve created a new form of segmentation. This new segmentation is detailed enough to calculate a lifestyle index and overall consumer behaviour pattern that is relevant to our today and tomorrow. There are tons of modelling techniques out there that speak of specific LSM but are there any that speak directly to who your consumers really are? To address this, we’ve built an LSM model or supposed Socioeconomic Status, based on facts of an individual.
Of course, there are a thousand ways of segmenting a market. So, we’ve used a few simple ways of gaining insight into the consumers of South Africa and detailed them from different angles starting with the more legacy-based demographical data. In addition, we looked for trends in the South African market and then analysed the behavioural, psychographic and geographic segmentation of individual consumers. This makes it a detailed and more relevant view of people in South Africa, adding value to both consumers and businesses alike.
How well do you understand your South Africa?
Because, if you think about it, this could be the very key to reinventing your business and taking on greater success. For more information on creating a consumer segmentation that will work for you, visit our website www.blake.co.za
