A quarter of SA consumers shop at Shoprite, more than double its closest competitor Pick n Pay’s custom, according to data released by the Marketing All Product Survey (MAPS).
Shoprite also captured most of the bottle store footfall, though Spar Tops is close behind, attracting more than 2-million liquor consumers a month.
The data, a detailed study of how and when South Africans spend their money was drawn from more than 20,000 interviews conducted in 2021 and is collected by the nonprofit Marketing Research Foundation and research group Plus 94 Research. The data, formerly known as AMPS, essentially is a census of the SA consumer.
The sample is weighted to represent SA demographics, wealth, race, gender and location and researchers sampled countrywide.
While advertisers and brands pay for access to the detailed data, the free overview gives a sense of the country’s most popular brands and is a reminder that the average SA consumer falls into a lower-income bracket. The average household income was recorded as R11,648 and the average individual income as R4,882.
Many brands are moving to focus more on the informal or lower end of the market, with Pick n Pay planning to expand its discount brand Boxer 60% over the next three years.
The MAPS data show 12% of consumers prefer shopping at Pick and Pay, while 10% choose discount chain Boxer and 10% Spar. Though only 5% of consumers’ favourite store was Checkers, it attracted the wealthiest consumers whose households earned R20,087 a month — which suggests the grocer’s strategy of targeting wealthier consumers with its upgraded stores is working.
Shoprite, the clear leader, was favoured by 26% of respondents whose households earned an average of R9,223 a month.
Overall, in terms of the shopper’s favoured choice, Pick n Pay and its lower-end Boxer brand captured about 22% of the market, with Shoprite and Checkers garnering about 31%.
Woolworths Food, which has a much smaller but far wealthier target market, was not included in the high-level data release.
Researchers asked consumers where they had bought alcohol in the past four weeks and Shoprite Liquor was the winner too, attracting 2.4-million consumers.
Wealthier consumers
Spar Tops brand was in second place attracting 2-million customers with a much wealthier consumer on average. Spar’s alcohol chain Tops is integral to its appeal as people go to the bottle store and then pop into the neighbouring store for a basket of groceries. Spar’s revenue was squeezed by lockdown sales bans in 2020 and 2021, for 23 weeks, but may bounce back in 2022.
The survey asked people if they had bought clothing in the previous three months, and almost 58% said they had not. For those who had, Mr Price was the preference for men’s and women’s apparel of about 17% of respondents. Pepkor-owned Ackermans was the favourite shop to buy children’s clothing, which was likely to have been boosted by the sale of school shirts and school shoes.
Pepkor hopes to export its success with children’s clothing to Brazil where the group has bought a Brazilian family-owned clothing retailer.
Among other findings, the MAPS data revealed that 2% of consumers now choose to have their salary invested into Tyme Bank, majority-owned by Patrice Motsepe’s African Rainbow Capital.
Capitec is the clear banking leader, garnering 37% of salaries among users with an average household income of R11,326, while FNB is in second place, attracting 9% of all salaries from a wealthier customer whose average household salary equals R18,476.
The survey revealed that about 95% of SA consumers have access to a cellphone and 76% to a smartphone. More than 19-million use the social media platform WhatsApp.
About 4.4-million people invest and save through a stokvel, much higher than the 750,000 who reported investing on the stock exchange. Stokvel members are targeted by listed company Massmart, which sells bulk goods to Makro stokvel customers on a special day in the last quarter of the year.
Vodacom had 38% of market share, followed by MTN with 34% and Telkom and Cell C almost tied in third place. The most popular cellphone brand was Samsung, with 12.4-million users, while 1.2-million consumers used iPhones
The most visited malls in Gauteng were East Rand Mall followed by Maponya Mall in Soweto. The Pavilion was the most popular mall in KwaZulu-Natal with upmarket Umhlanga Gateway mall in third place.
The most visited mall in the Western Cape was Liberty Promenade in Mitchells Plain with Canal Walk second and Khayelitsha Mall third.
More than half of the respondents bought takeaways once a month with a third preferring KFC, followed by Chicken Licken in second place and Debonairs pizza chain owned by listed Famous Bands third.
About 5% of takeaways are bought via drive-throughs. Famous Brands said recently it plans to add more and Spur and hamburger chain RocoMamas are also opening drive-throughs.
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