Two key trends characterise South African households. Firstly they are getting smaller as the number of households grows faster than the number of individuals. Secondly, living standards have improved with the proportion of households in LSMs one to five declining steadily.

What factors are shaping these trends? Demographics and economics are always important, but housing supply also plays a key role. When politicians say we have built almost 3 million houses since the dawn of democracy they might be over-stating things a bit, but the bottom line is that things in South Africa are really changing on the ground literally speaking. Aside from very significant government delivery, we have new ‘integrated’ neighbourhoods and re-juvenating inner cities. Needless to say this has quite profound implications on the location of your market, their purchasing priorities and who wins the battle for share of wallet.

In this presentation on 22nd April 2010 we shared some hard facts, showed the trends and highlight some of the implications and took a glimpse at the future.

(Use the links in the grey box on the right for more movies)