Customer Profiling

MOSAIC household segmentation

What it is and how it can be used:

MOSAIC Public Sector is a household segmentation and profiling tool, which provides detailed descriptive information on typical demographic, lifestyle and behavioural characteristics of customers.

The information is sorted into 15 household groups, which are further divided into 69 household types, which have been derived from 440 data elements.

Despite being a modelled dataset, MOSAIC can enable a greater level of insight and understanding, particularly when used to analyse and add depth to other existing local datasets.

Through identifying customer groups and their locations, the varying needs and preferences of customers are highlighted, so we are able to treat/help them accordingly, and identify areas of need and investment opportunity.

Where it comes from:

62% of the data used to produce MOSAIC comes from Experian’s Consumer dynamics database, which sources information from a variety of sources including the electoral roll, credit and car ownership reports, the shareholders register, house sale prices and council tax bands. The other 38% of the data is sourced from Experian’s current year estimates of the 2001 census. 

How it's produced and what is shows:

The gathered data is then used to produce clusters, each of which is named, described and coloured dependent on the information reflected. Further market research and surveys are produced to test these, as the segmentations made show the likelihood of customers displaying a certain behaviour, characteristic or tendency and are based on regional predictions and should not be regarded as actual local data.

MOSAIC in Sandwell

The chart on the right shows the representation of each household group in Sandwell (based on numbers of Sandwell postcodes in each). You can read more about the characteristics of the groups and types by clicking here

In addition to the postcode-level tool above, you can open a normal query view for MOSAIC, which will enable you to look at how individual groups are distributed by the other key geographies within Sandwell, e.g. wards and towns. To go to such a query, click here, or to see the query that created the chart at the top of this page, click here.

Experian have derived their groups and types from some 440 data items, and have used these to make inferences about over 900 behaviours, attitudes and demographic factors in the form of an index score for characteristic against each household group and type. Research Sandwell has done some work with this 'Grand Index' to map the distribution of these characteristics by applying the index to every postcode in the borough. You can read more about this, and see some real examples by clicking 'Selected Indicators' at the bottom of the page, and you can download a document below that itemises all the characteristics in the index, together with their data sources.

You may also be interested to know that Improvement and Efficiency West Midlands has produced a guide to the utilisation of customer insight data, presenting ten top tips to help public sector organisations when making the decision to purchase and use segmentation data. You can download the report from here.

The Map on the left shows the 2009 MOSAIC household data for Sandwell. Each LSOA has been coloured according to its MOSAIC group and these are listed A to O in the legend; each one providing a short descriptive profile of different groups of people based on characteristics such as age, income, house type, location etc.

If you click on an area on the map, the spine chart will display the percentage of each MOSAIC group within the selected area, and allow you to make comparisons against figures for the whole of Sandwell Borough.

LSOA Drill down level:

To gain more detailed information on a specific LSOA, double click on an area of the map. A new window will then open and zoom into the selected LSOA beyond its dominant MOSAIC grouping, to provide a breakdown of the MOSAIC groups at postcode level. You can also then double click on a postcode area to view it in Google maps, where you then have access to street view and satellite images of the area.

If you click ‘zoom’ in top right hand corner of the thumbnail, you are able to open the MOSAIC map up and you then have a range of options.

Choose an indicator…

Click ‘indicator’ above the map and choose to view either the ‘dominant group’ in each area or choose a specific MOSAIC group and compare the concentration of that group visually in different areas across the Borough.

Choose a geography…

Clicking on ‘geography’ just above the map enables you to choose the geography you would like to display data for, and allows you to select either neighbourhoods or LSOA level.

The Map legend…

Click ‘map legend’ above the map to show the MOSAIC group descriptions.

To display and compare two areas with the same dominant group, click a descriptive group on the legend. The 2 areas with the highest proportion of that group will then be displayed in the spine chart, and enable you to compare and contrast the percentages between those areas across all 15 MOSAIC groups.

You can also display larger map boundaries by using the scroll bar on the legend and clicking on the green squares next to ‘MSOA’, ‘Neighbourhood’, ‘Ward’ or ‘Town’ to see how the LSOA’s/neighbourhoods fit into different geographies.

Filters…

Clicking on ‘filter’ above the spine chart enables you to filter by a range of geographies eg.Ward. This means that you can look at several LSOAs or neighbourhoods within a larger boundary, at the same time.

Sorting…

Clicking on a title in the Map legend allows you to sort the information. Click once to sort in ascending order. If you would like to sort the information in descending order, simply click again.

More detail on MOSAIC groups…

For a detailed profile of a MOSAIC group, click on the paper icon in the legend next to your chosen LSOA or postcode. This link opens a pdf document which provides detailed information on demographics, lifestyles and behaviours of the people who are likely to live in that area.