MEDIA GROUPS MEASURE (MGMs)

By Dr Clive Corder. Chairman of SAARF

The Media Groups Measure was developed as a segmentation tool in addition LSMs, life stage and demographics. A major reason behind this initiative was the realisation that when LSMs are used for media scheduling, sometimes without taking into account other variables, there is a risk that many existing and potential customers could be excluded. Whilst it may make good sense to focus on certain LSMs because of the appropriateness of their living standards, for many products a broader approach might be more effective. A further consideration was the expressed desire of government to be able to reach people across the whole country in the most cost effective manner and thus the need to identify media that could optimally achieve this objective.

An examination of the reach of different media types shows that the less well off are only reached by a few media, for reasons of geographical location that limits availability; education, especially literacy; and financial ability to acquire access. In contrast urban dwellers tend to have higher levels of education, more disposable income and greater access to media, both at work and at home. On the downside discretionary money and time for media is often spread over a wide range with the concomitant risk of less impact.

The MGMs are designed to give insights into the build up of media duplication not only in terms of media types, but also individual options within each medium.

It is suggested that the starting point in using the MGMs is to determine the target market, whether this is in terms of product or brand usage. AMPS provides the opportunity to identify product users and, for subscribers to Branded AMPS, users of own and oppositions brands.

The next step is to establish the incidence and number of members of this target group in each of the MGMs. An evaluation can then be made of the effectiveness of different media and combinations of media in reaching these MGMs.

In the lower MGMs there are certain media that have comparatively strong reach, whereas other media only come into their own in the higher groups. The MGMs thus provide an indication of the best options to consider in order to reach people in the target market with low, medium and high exposure to different types of media.

Examination of the duplication of reach for media types within MGMs allows for Media Imperatives, or an evaluation of the additional reach achieved by adding further media types, and Media Synergy, which can greatly enhance the effectiveness of advertising in more than one medium.

Each respondent in the AMPS 2002A database was categorised according to the media types that they used. The media taken into account were cinema, Internet, print, outdoor, radio and television. The first principal component was obtained for each of magazines, newspapers, community newspapers, outdoor, commercial radio, and television. These six variables, together with cinema, community radio and Internet, were used in a second principal component analysis. This final principal component was then used to create 8 media groups, which have been called SAARF’s Media Groups Measure (MGMs). The greater the duplication of exposure to different media types the higher the MGM. Prof Jacky Galpin, School of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of the Witwatersrand did the statistical analysis for the MGMs.

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