Blog by James Leggett, mtm Research Analyst
Data collection is a large and rapidly expanding industry. If you use a credit or debit card, the size and location of your transaction are recorded and added to a national database. With over 30 million credit /debit card users in the UK alone, the data quickly builds up…
Imagine then the data you could gather if you knew how much a consumer spent and what they bought each week.
Store ‘loyalty’ cards, such as the Tesco clubcard and Sainsbury’s Nectar card, do just that, recording every transaction, allowing them to create a profile of the card holder, their likes and dislikes, the quality of products they buy (e.g brand names or own brand) and the frequency of their visits.
Combine this data with many other sources, such as government data on incomes, telephone data on phone usage, newspaper subscriptions, holiday purchases, educational achievements, television package subscriptions and vehicle ownership to name but a few, and you can build up an incredibly detailed picture of a household.
But what use is all this data?
mtm's Mandarin catchment area analysis allows you to see market potential right down to street level
At mtm, we use the ACORN classification system, which uses over 400 variables on each postcode, to define lifestyles. If you know the lifestyle of your current buyers, imagine how much easier it is to find and target those with a similar lifestyle.
To put it another way, say you needed a pen. If you know where the pens are, it’s a lot easier to find one when you need it. You segment your kitchen to ensure you know where your knives and forks are every time you need them, which also means you don’t waste time and effort hunting around to find things, so why not do the same with your market?
This is precisely what I do for a large proportion of my day at mtmconsulting. In our ‘Mandarin’ catchment area research we combine both ACORN and household income to find families who not only have the appropriate lifestyle indicators, but also have the income to pay independent school fees. We can chart these right down to street level, as shown in the map above.
Plotting this on a map allows school marketers and registrars to target their advertising accordingly, and to better understand the strength of a lead when it comes in. You could even use the map to compare the marketing media used against the quality of the lead.
If you then add in data on future population changes, competitor influence, transport routes and bursary information, imagine the possibilities…
To discuss our school research and education marketing work please contact mtm.
