24 Apr 2020

Insights Report On How the Coronavirus (Covid19) Is Having An Impact On The South African Consumer’s Lifestyle And Behaviour

Insights Report On How the Coronavirus (Covid19) Is Having An Impact On The South African Consumer’s Lifestyle And Behaviour

JOHANNESBURG, 24 April 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic, has deeply challenged every aspect of business and personal lives. Topline Research Solutions (TRS) in partnership with Ganizani Consulting have designed a weekly research tracker survey (Project TopGan) to formally keep businesses and relevant stakeholders connected with people (the customers) so that products and services offered as well risk mitigation interventions remain relevant. President Cyril Ramaphosa announced on March 23 2020 that the country will be going into lockdown for 21 days. The lockdown started on midnight March 26 2020 and was scheduled to end on 16 April 2020. This was further extended to the end of April.  On Thursday 23 April 2020, the President further announced a phased resumption of economic activity. He announced that effective from the 1st of May 2020, South Africa will move to level 4 lockdown, stepping down from level 5 lockdown which it is currently under. This research takes into account this lockdown period and future reports will track the behaviour beyond.

The current weekly tracker survey covers:

  • Level of optimism about life in general
  • Shopping behaviours
  • South Africans’ lifestyles, covering sport, entertainment, hobbies, church, live event attendance and more
  • Access to Information Communication Technology (ICT), at home, among South Africans
  • Media consumption and information needs

The research findings clearly confirm that it shall not be business as usual. The pandemic has brought about changes in consumer’s attitudes, behaviour, lifestyle, interests, media consumption and social and e-commerce platforms in the three provinces we tracked namely, Gauteng, KZN and Western Cape (which are also at the forefront in terms of numbers of those affected).

9 out of 10 consumers are worried about the Covid19 pandemic. For survival, businesses need to empathise with the stressed consumer, who is mostly worried about their health/Covid-19, the economy, cost of living, the future of the economy and understand prevailing pain points which are highlighted in this report.

Our data suggests that people are changing their behaviour because of the pandemic and the lock-down requirements set in place by Governments across Africa. People are developing new lifestyles, priorities, experiences and needs.

There has indeed been a change in life as we knew it from optimism, to shopping behaviour to lifestyles. In the past 6 months before the pandemic, our data suggests that 7 out of 10 people were optimistic about life in general, this has plummeted to 2 out of 10 in the past 7 days. This leaves people stressed out.

The data calls for a need for relevant engagement on keeping the stress levels down and motivations up, on connecting with consumers at a deeper, meaningful level on what it is that is keeping them awake at night, their information needs, their lifestyle needs. Messaging that informs and encourages would be welcome by all who communicate with people right now. Technological innovation taking into account the context that we operate in with our ICT capabilities.

Lastly, formal mechanisms that provide customer-experience feedback will be necessary to ensure that the ongoing corrective measures will be aligned and relevant. It is anticipated that those anointed as ‘essential’ services will be exemplary in all respects.

Brands and organisations can’ jump on the bandwagon’ and add brand/organizational specific questions over and above the current questions to our carefully selected panel. Project TopGan is both a telephonic and online survey with respondents drawn from TRS’s electronic database (panel) of adult South Africans across different demographics.

***ENDS***

Note to Editors:

Statement issued by Topline Research Solutions. For an interview, please call executive chairman Patson, on 083 423 4554 or Judith Mugeni on 0823166730. For more information or access to report, please email  judith@ganizaniconsulting.com or download the report at https://ganizaniconsultingservices.co.za/default/covid-19-report/

For general enquiries, please write to Charity at the following email address charity@topliners.co.za

(TRS) is a reputable Pan African marketing and social research consultancy based in South Africa whilst Ganizani Consulting is also a reputable Integrated Marketing Communication consultancy domiciled in South Africa.

21 Apr 2020

Thought Leaders – Integrated Marketing Communications: Episode 01: Judith Mugeni

Thought Leaders – Integrated Marketing Communications: Episode 01: Judith Mugeni

Ritevac TV interviewed Judith Mugeni: Founder and Managing Partner-Marketing and Strategy at Ganizani Consulting Services, Strategic Marketing and Tech firm. At that time – the Business Director: Experienced Integrated Marketing Comms, Sponsorship Strategist and Researcher at Octagon.

The insights focused around the strategic planning tool 5ws and 1h tool for marketing.

Putting a Marketing Plan together? Ask yourself these simple questions as the first step:

What:

  • What are you?
  • Answer this in terms of what is  you are offering the market? Describe your  products and or services,  using its Features and benefits?

Who:

  • Who are you offering i.e. your products and or services to? Ask who should be buying or using our products and services? Who is your target audience?
  • This is what we call segmentation.
  • This requires you to break down the market into different segments – sets –  that would use your product and services and then choosing the viable ones (e.g. primary and secondary market).
  • Describe them as much as you can in terms of:
    • Demographics (describe them using elements such as age, gender, income, marital status, ethnic group, LSMs/Socio Economic status etc) ,
    • Pyschographics (activities, personality and values, attitudes),
    • Geographics (local, regional, provincial, national, cities, towns etc),
    • Behavioural (benefits, usage rates – for example once a month, three times a day, breakfast etc and patterns)

Where:

  • Where – where can you find your target audience – the answer to this gives you contact/touch points,
  • Thus where can they find you (distribution channels) – this is the P in marketing called place

When:

  • When – refers to timing (is your offering seasonal or is all year round)
  • When do you target your target audience and when do you offer your services?

Why: 

  • For the company -it’s important that you ask yourself – what are your marketing objectives? Why are you doing what you are doing? What do you seek to achieve (for example increase sales, push foot traffic to the stores, traffic to our website)
  • And for the consumer – ask yourself why should they care? Why should they choose you?

How – After you have all the W’s put them next to each other and create the action plan? The tactics. How will you engage the target audience?

Application using our own company for example:

What: Ganizani Consulting services is a marketing and tech firm. We offer technology services such as digital to include digital marketing, mobile application, website design and development, cloud computing solutions, solutions architecture and software development. Our strategic marketing arm focuses on brand strategy (brand audit, brand CI including designing your logo and look and feel), strategy workshops, marketing strategy, market research, events marketing,  integrated marketing communications, sponsorship marketing.

Who: Our main target audience are SMMEs – small to medium sized businesses, who are looking to grow their brands through technological advancement and marketing – getting the right product at the right price to the right place to reach the consumer.

Where: We operate on the African continent and our headoffice is based in South Africa.

When – our services are not seasonal, clients can call us whenever they have a need to grow their business. To get a hold of us, our offices are open monday to friday from 8am till 6m.

Why – our value proposition is in our name which is to think – we offer strategic solutions based on industry know how and based on client needs. All our solutions are çustom built. Our consumers care because we make it easy for them to defend the solution and offer return on investment in all we do.

How – to reach our target audiences above we use our website to communicate our offering, we use social media such as Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter (which gives us exposure to the African continent), we blog and appear as guests on podcast if needed).

That is the simple strategic planning tool – used properly it can provide reach insights into your business

For more watch the full video on RiteVac TV on: