What will ROOTS 2019 reveal about your customers?

Conducted by SPARK Media every three years, ROOTS is South Africa’s largest urban, community-level quantitative survey. With fieldwork for the 2019 survey already started from mid-March, there is much anticipation around what the latest findings from the updated questionnaire will reveal, particularly around digital trends, when the data is released in early 2019.

Started in the 1990’s, ROOTS provides marketers with vital demographic information for their customer base at a community level. It delivers key intelligence and insights into buyers’ behaviour in various categories, such as: readership, shopping, food and groceries, banking, entertainment, travel and digital. The pure random sample covers 120 communities across urban South Africa. A total of 27 000 household purchase decision-makers are interviewed for 50 minutes in their homes to gather this information.

ROOTS is undertaken by independent research house, Kantar TNS. This will be its sixth ROOTS, with 2004 being the first. This means that in many communities changes can be tracked back 14 years. As much as 80 per cent of the questionnaire remains consistent for this reason, while 20 per cent is updated to incorporate new trends in consumer behaviour, particularly around the impact of technology on our lives.

‘ROOTS’ data gives us powerful insights into consumers at a local level,’ Gill Randall, Joint CEO of SPARK Media said. ‘With the data in hand, it’s crucial that marketers decide how best to use that information within a broader framework of globally proven consumer behaviour laws, such as continuity of exposure, leveraging a brand’s distinctive assets and achieving mass reach of a category.’

Keep your eyes peeled for more updates on this exciting study. For more information about ROOTS 2019, contact SPARK Media on 010 492 8390, visit www.sparkmedia.co.za, follow us on Twitter – www.twitter.com/SparkMediaSA or connect with ‘SPARK Media’ (sparkmediasa) on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.