ROOTS 2016 delivers technology insights

“For the purpose of illustration let’s look at two different communities within Gauteng: Fourways and Soweto,” says Spark Media’s CEO, Gill Randall. “Just 4% of Soweto consumers own a laptop compared to Fourways’ 64%, while 2% of Soweto residents own a Smart, or Internet-enabled TV against the 13% of Fourways residents.”

However, the prevalence of mobile phones is ubiquitous, with 98% of Fourways residents and 59% of Soweto consumers owning a smartphone. Feature phones are popular in Soweto at 30% versus just 2% in Fourways.

ROOTS 2016 provides marketers, advertisers, media and creative agencies with the intelligence and insights into the consumer's media, shopping, tech, lifestyle and leisure habits, to name a few, at a local community level.

“The crucial distinction between ROOTS and other quantitative research is that insights are acquired at local community levels which allow marketers and retailers to get to know their consumers on a local level,” says Gill. "Looking at the first example again, it is all too easy to say that, on average, 34% of consumers own a laptop in Fourways and Soweto, but the power of ROOTS 2016 to drill down to micro level will clearly deliver critical insights into a consumer’s buying habits."

The Internet has become an integral part of our daily lives! At the time of in-field research, ROOTS 2016 took a snapshot of suburbs accessing the internet over the past four weeks. Results show that Midrand has the most prolific internet users at 99% with Fourways (94%), Sandton (93%), Randburg (91%) and Umhlanga (89%) following close behind.

Camps Bay, East London and Milnerton all displayed in the 60 percentiles. Orlando in Soweto showed the least number of PDM’s accessing the internet over the four-week period at 29% followed by Mamelodi in Pretoria and Jabavu in Soweto, both at 30%.

Across the survey on a national level, 62% of Purchase Decision Makers (PDMs) access the internet. Most of these decision-makers access the net several times a day (79%) while 38% say they never access the internet.

ROOTS 2016 data is available on Telmar, Nielsen, and 80/20 with top line research results on www.sparkmedia.co.za.

For more information about ROOTS 2016, contact Samu Makhathini, Research Manager (az.oc.aidemkraps@ms) at SPARK Media. Or connect on Twitter @sparkmediasa #ROOTS2016 or find us on Facebook at SPARK Media.