In total, just under 18 000 interviews were conducted, amounting to well over 13 000 hours of interviewing time, focusing on detailed retail and readership information. The biggest adjustment to previous surveys is that many non-Caxton operational areas have been included, providing marketers and advertisers with a national urban framework.
"Our primary aim is to provide advertisers and marketers with a tool that can assist in analysing South Africa's key urban geographic segments through demographic information and retail data for the non-durable, semi-durable, durable and services sectors. This includes detailed geographic market share data, shopping behaviour, market size and other retail related data.
Average issue readership results by area for community (sold and free), daily and weekly press and leading weekly magazines have also been included. Adding to this, we have concentrated on financial services findings, community activities, new retail categories such as crockery and linen outlets as well as many other interesting sectors," says joint managing director of NAB, John Bowles.
The data is compatible with NAB's Geographical Information System (GIS), providing a bird's eye view across all researched areas. For example, the mapping system can spatially plot high incidence geo-segments of retail catchment areas, demographic groups, retail chains or many other interesting shopping elements. This visual picture can allow users to interpret and absorb the information easier than the more traditional techniques.
ROOTS 2004 will be officially released to its users from the 20th of May 2004. For more information, contact John Bowles at NAB on Tel: 27 11 889 0600.
Owlhurst Communications on behalf of the Newspaper Advertising Bureau
