On Thursday, 6 November 2024, the Marketing Research Foundation (MRF), in collaboration with market research company Plus94 Research, held a webinar to show their findings in the Marketing All Product Survey (MAPS™). MRF recently announced the 13th release of its MAPS™ data set, providing a comprehensive look into South African consumer trends and media insights from July 2023 to June 2024.
This latest dataset enables year-on-year, quarterly, and release-to-release comparisons, allowing businesses to understand evolving consumer behaviors and media usage patterns.
MRF CEO Johann Koster chaired the webinar, opening the proceedings by speaking to insights, trends and outlying events that have affected and are reflected by the data in the MAPS™. Notable key findings that were highlighted by Koster were the effects of the Ukraine conflict on local interest rates, the contrast between consumer habits during the Covid and post-Covid era and the effects of local events, such as flooding, riots and loadshedding, on the overall South African economy.
Rinisa Naidoo, Project Manager at Plus94 Research, guided the webinar attendees through a consumer spending and media usage crash course. All while highlighting some of the most interesting findings that have been revealed by the data set, including the impact of escalating inflation on grocery and consumer goods purchasing power, shifting habits around traditional and digital media consumption, households’ reliance on mobile banking and money transfer services, evolution of e-commerce and online shopping adoption across categories like clothing and merging trends in alcoholic beverage preferences and liquor retail channel choices.
During the webinar, Dr Sifiso Falala, CEO of Plus 94 Research, reported live from the streets of Alexandria Township. He was able to show attendees what in contact data capturing looks like, how much of a ‘data sampling nightmare’ the South African landscape can be for data scientists and what challenges many low income households face that changes their spending and media consumption habits.
The MAPS data provides valuable insights into media consumption, lifestyle trends, and purchasing habits across various demographics in South Africa. For example, trends in social media engagement, preferences in media channels and shifts in consumer priorities are included. Helping brands tailor marketing strategies effectively. This year’s data also emphasises the growing role of digital and mobile platforms, which are seeing increased engagement among diverse groups.
Koster highlighted that with four years of data now available, marketers and advertisers have unprecedented tracking capabilities for both short and long-term trends. The MRF has already shared this data with software vendors.
For those interested in detailed findings or subscribing to the MAPS data, further information can be found on the MRF’s official website and through their upcoming events and publications.
MARKETING RESEARCH FOUNDATION
mrfsa.org.za
