Understanding where South Africans live –
and who they are

Segmenting and targeting customers requires good data, and the more credible and accurate the data, the greater the value. Lightstone’s demographic and consumer data draws from multiple, credible sources and, when blended, offers consumer insights that are granular and revealing.

Lightstone’s recently updated demographic profiling database, DemProKey, provides the most up-to-date and granular demographics on offer, so that you can enrich your customer knowledge, plan your value chains, and optimise your marketing spend.

DemProKey 2023 uses the 2011 Census with headlines from Census 2022 – the full details are not yet published – and makes informed allocations on formal dwelling growth and estimates informal growth so that our clients can confidently understand the size and profile of populations they serve, and explore new or competitive markets.

DemProKey adjusts income brackets every two years with new rand values, to better show actual changes in wealth and not only general inflationary increases. By way of example, at the time of Census 2011, an area with household income levels of R34 000-R42 000 would, in 2022/23, be earning R62 000-R77 500 – the increase due to inflationary increases only.

Similarly, for age distribution methodology, Lightstone previously updated the age distribution within an enumerator area based on a combination of natural aging* and changes in the owner age profiles in areas of high property churn. All of this is done to provide the most accurate picture of the populations.

Importantly, for the South African context, Lightstone has also accounted for rural/village-to-urban migration of job seekers and urban-torural/ village migration of children sent ‘home’, which pulls the overall provincial-level age distributions closer in line with StatsSA estimates.

On top of DemProKey, Lightstone evaluates geo-demographic segmentation, using several different datasets, and has characterised 19 key segments for South Africa, by the predominant segment or type of person who lives in that area. Lightstone has more than 100 000 areas mapped to cover the country, making this the most geographically granular demographic segmentation available for retail network planners and marketers.

The uses are many and varied:

* Natural aging: determined by applying death rates onto the oldest group and birth rates into the youngest group, according to the number of women naturally aged into the 18-39 brackets in the enumerator area.