Johannesburg - Four shopping malls that opened in Soweto over the past three years were attracting most of the township residents' buying power, according to research by the Unisa's Bureau of Market Research (BMR).
A fifth mall, scheduled to open in 2010, was likely to accelerate the diversion of spending from outside retailers to township outlets, according to BMR head Deon Tustin.
The BMR survey, involving 690 households in the fourth quarter of last year, showed that nine out of 10 Soweto residents bought from local retailers, purchasing nearly half of their household needs from the newly established shopping centres.
Residents make 10.4 percent of consumer purchases from Soweto's home-based business and 7.2 percent from street vendors in the township, buying only 20 percent of their household goods and services from businesses outside Soweto.
These outside purchases are usually made by people working outside Soweto, to top up their Saturday and Sunday shopping in local malls.
Tustin said the BMR research was a "base line study" so no earlier figures were available for comparison. But given the gap between the opening of the Dobsonville Shopping Mall in 1994 and the Protea Gardens Mall in 2005, residents previously had little option but to shop outside the township.
The Protea development came after a 2003 study by the City of Johannesburg revealed that Soweto was home to 4 million people with annual spending power of about R10.5 billion, of which R4.3 billion was available for consumer products.
Other shopping developments followed: Baramall, Jabulani Mall and Maponya Mall. Tustin said: "Further retail development is planned as part of the Orlando eKhaya entertainment and business development project."
The retail development accompanies a property boom in the former black township.
According to BMR research director Carel van Aardt, the development of the malls had increased incomes and created more job opportunities.
The Lightstone township property index, which tracks the prices of 1.4 million township properties, shows annual price inflation rose from 5 percent in 2000 to 39 percent last year - well above the increase of 18 percent in Lightstone's national index.
Lightstone does not include low-income housing in its township index.
Tustin said that almost 70 percent of Soweto residents who shop at the new malls regarded themselves as trolley (bulk) shoppers.
The survey found that poster and word-of-mouth marketing were most effective in encouraging people to shop close to home. But newspapers, radio and television were also identified as "promising".