For 25 years Experian has been helping organisations all over the world understand more about their customers to improve the timeliness and relevance of their communication with current and future customers. Our award-winning, privacy compliant, consumer segmentation solution, Mosaic, powers many of the insights our clients use to drive their marketing and analytics success. In this article we are going to take a deep dive into Mosaic and show you how organisations are realising the benefits from using this powerful consumer classification solution.
What is Mosaic?
Mosaic is the most comprehensive consumer classification tool in Australia. It can instantly provide organisations with a detailed and granular view of the socio-demographic profile of the Australian population and how that relates to their own customers. Mosaic utilises more than a thousand data variables from a variety of sources to develop a rich and detailed understanding of consumer behaviours and preferences. Using this insight into consumers, Experian models every Australian & New Zealand* household to classify them into one of 14 Groups and 51 Types, based on their likely behaviours and preferences, which can then be attached to an organisation’s database for analysis, insight and activation.
Why do businesses use Mosaic?
They say knowledge is power and information that is actionable is knowledge. Mosaic has always aimed to help organisations with more information about their customers that is fast, adaptable and at scale. Successful businesses connect with consumers. Whether it be as simple as understanding their preferred customer service needs or as complex as designing new products that appeal to valuable consumer segments. Mosaic powers the connections many successful businesses make with their consumers.
It’s obvious that not all consumers are the same but it’s also unrealistic that you can have personalised messages for 19m adults in Australia, the creative fees alone would cripple even those with the deepest pockets. Mosaic’s ability in classifying the Australian population and our client’s customer data at scale based on stable data and robust techniques allow organisations to help identify the profitable versus cheap to acquire or the early adopter versus the safe and steady. Built off solid foundations; Mosaic, stand alone or combined with 1st party data, helps organisations understand patterns of behaviours and preferences of customers buying from them today. It also gives them the chance to Predict what they will need in the future, making them well placed to deepen their relationship further. This understanding can then be used to drive valuable engagements with customers through improved marketing, service delivery and resource allocation.
Who are ‘Determined Suburbans’?
There are some key socio-economic factors that drive the allocation of each Mosaic segment across the Australian population. These fundamental attributes provide a concise summation of the consumers classified in each segment:
Type F17: Determined Suburbans (sub-set of Group F: Establishing Roots)
These attributes are then complemented by over 300 different lifestyle, behavioural and attitudinal profiles to provide a complete picture of the consumer. This amalgamation of data types, enables Experian to build a national segmentation that is adaptable and finds the right balance between stability and dynamism by successfully using rich updateable data sources to supplement a stable and robust segmentation model.
What variables go into Mosaic?
There are four main categories of variables that are used to determine the Mosaic Groups and Types: geographic, demographic, psychographic and behavioural. Let’s look at these a little more:
Geographic – One of the fundamental attributes that drive the allocation of households to a Mosaic segment is geography. We believe where people live provides a valuable lens into their likely behaviour and preferences. From a person’s income and family structure through to social life, schooling, and their entertainment choice; where you choose to live says a lot about you. In addition, we refine our understanding of the Australian household by analysing information about the property that can add additional accuracy and descriptive power to our segments. The characteristics of a property can tell you a lot about the people living there, incorporating information such as the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, land size and values gives Mosaic relevance across a diverse set of industries.
Demographic – Understanding a consumer’s unique demographic attributes is a critically important category of data used to power the allocation of Mosaic segments. Attributes such as age, gender, income, profession, and education are fundamental to building a detailed segmentation of the population. Experian utilises the Australian Census, which is undoubtedly the most comprehensive data source available in Australia, together with data sourced from our partners. Over the course of five Census’ our commitment and belief in the power of demographic data to power customer insights and drive effective targeting is undiminished.
Psychographic – What people believe and how they make their choices are undoubtedly significant elements in building an accurate understanding of Australian consumers. This is why Experian incorporates psychographic variables when building the Mosaic segmentation solution. We believe consumers attitudes towards environmental concerns, community values, attitudes to price, views on the ease of use and the value they attribute to convenience are important factors consumers consider when making purchasing decisions. Mosaic utilises these important elements in consumer decision making to further inform and develop a valuable understanding of the Australian consumer, and allow us to describe their interactions and attitudes to industries or new trends.
Behavioural – Understanding how consumers behave is another important component that Mosaic utilises in understanding the Australian population. To connect with consumers, companies need insight into how people buy, where they buy, their online behaviour and the impact of external factors on the way they buy (such as the current pandemic). These insights are invaluable when making important business decisions, such as, whether to open a new store and where it should be located or whether media consumption has changed like the growth of streaming TV.
Mosaic is being refreshed in 2021
The next chapter for Mosaic in Australia continues in late 2021 with its latest refresh. Aside from the many changes that have come due to the pandemic, there are also opportunities for us to improve based on feedback we’ve received in two areas;
- Additional data sources to reflect new consumer behaviour, and the faster pace of change, in some way expedited by COVID.
- Better usability and access to insight in both the foundational models that are used to build Mosaic, as well as our client facing portals.
Our continued investment in Mosaic will allow us to release updates more frequently going forward, whether improving existing descriptive capabilities or adding new attributes based on changes we see in client needs or the population’s behaviour. We are excited about the possibilities and can’t wait to share what we have coming with our loyal customers and new ones alike.