In Part I of ‘A Tale of Two Nations’, Eighty20 highlighted the inequality in South African society using our ENS Customer Profiling Tool. We showed how two geographical areas, separated by only a road, can be starkly different.  In this blog, we discuss how our Suburb Profiler uses South Africa’s Census location hierarchy to dig deeper into these larger areas and look at our nation at a more granular level. 

Using Eighty20’s Suburb Profiler to drill deeper into geographical areas enables you to better understand consumers, and answer three key questions:

1. How is my business performing in specific areas?
2. Where can I expand and grow my business footprint?
3. How do I optimise my value proposition to effectively grow existing customers, and acquire new customers?

Given that people live in distinct geographies, it makes sense that marketers and strategists want to better understand key features of these areas. The data revolution has been hugely successful in helping businesses, and more specifically marketers, develop products, business models and marketing strategies that are more customer centric. Eighty20 helps clients develop a deeper understanding of their customers’ individual interests, behaviours, preferences and other factors. The Suburb Profiler specifically enables businesses to understand their markets and customers through a geospatial lens – where people live, work and play.

Eighty20’s Suburb Profiler begins with this breakdown of the Census demarcation system:

This demarcation system reveals interesting facts about one of Johannesburg’s seemingly most affluent areas – Sandton. Although Sandton is often thought of as a wealthy, homogeneous ‘suburb’, it is in fact made up of 60+ sub places, and stretches roughly 20 km from Illovo in the south to Broadacres in the north. Sandton is home to many of the top JSE-listed companies’ headquarters, famous malls and 5-star hotels, and lively bars – mostly concentrated in the sub place Sandown.

The obvious differences between these two main places reinforces the affluence inequality illustrated in ‘A Tale of Two Nations’, but even within Sandton, we see massive variation in key metrics, dispelling the notion that it is homogeneously super-wealthy.

The average personal income across the 62 sub places in Sandton range from around R2 800 to R42 000 per month. This is an extremely wide range, and it is important to remember that the profile and behaviour of these consumers will also vary widely. For example, the probability that consumers are banked ranges from 78% in the least affluent Sandton sub places to 99% in the most affluent. Furthermore, the probability that consumers have mortgages increases with income, and ranges from 2% to 44% (the national average is around 12%).

Many sub places in the Sandton main place have high personal incomes, but personal income decreases as we approach Alexandra, such as in Wynberg, Marlboro Gardens and Modderfontein AH. 

A similar analysis can be conducted for Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain, the main places investigated in ‘A Tale of Two Nations’. 

There are 28 sub places in the Khayelitsha main place, with average personal income ranging from around R2 250 to R7 500. The profile and behaviour of consumers in these different sub places varies widely across this affluence range: the probability that consumers are banked ranges from 68% in the least affluent sub places to 84% in the most affluent sub places.

Similarly, in the Mitchells Plain main place affluence varies substantially: average personal income varies from R1 750 to R11 450 across the 18 sub places, with the probability that consumers are banked ranging from 69% to 88%. 

So what do these location insights about Sandton, Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain, mean for your business? 

Any business’s product, price, promotional and distribution strategies needs to account for the differences among its target market. In South Africa, location is a critical variable in understanding some of these differences. The Suburb Profiler helps businesses acquire this understanding at a granular level to enable them to better serve their customers, and in so doing also improve their bottom line.