We’re pleased to announce the release of our newest vintage of Mexico geodemographic data.  GeoAnalitica’s 2019 Mexico data products offer growth-adjusted estimates for a few hundred variables (among them, 2019 population, 2019 household count, and 2019 household income).  Our 2019 Mexico estimates are available at the most relevant geographic units: a package of Urban AGEBs, Rural AGEBs, and Growth Grids that offer 100% territorial coverage in high-definition. 

We’re particularly excited because this vintage of data is possibly the final vintage based on Censo 2010 AGEBs and base-year data.  Mexico Censo 2010 has never been more outdated than it is right now, and we cringe to even imagine companies using straight-out-of-Censo 2010 results to make decisions right now in 2020.  Meanwhile, Mexico’s Censo 2020 is currently in progress, and there’s a possibility its tabulations and cartography will be published in time to guide GeoAnalitica’s next vintage of 2020 Mexico population and demographic estimates.  (Though, keep in mind, by the time Censo 2020 is published – even in the absence of any COVID-related slowdowns – it’s already 8-12 months out of date, due to the enormous need for lead-time when delineating geographies and conducting in-person follow-up interviews). 

It’s always more fun to put our new vintages in perspective with numbers.  Our 2019 dataset covers 90,989 geographic units (split among Urban AGEBs, Rural AGEBs, and our proprietary Growth Grids, which identify pockets of urban-type population outside of traditional Urban AGEBs).  In those nearly 91,000 geographic units, we estimate Mexico’s population in 2019 at 127,147,385 people.  We are also estimating Mexico household count in 2019 of 32,560,630.  And, to top it all off, we estimate a 2019 Mexico average household income of MXN$221,000.  We also classify AGEBs and Growth Grids according to their most likely predominant social class, so we’re able to estimate households falling in class A/B, C+, C, C-, D+, D and E (get in touch with us through our contact form if you’re curious about those numbers.)  There are a few hundred other variables that we estimate, but these are the ones we’re most frequently asked about.

Remember, these are national figures, and we’ll go out on a limb and tell you the uncomfortable truth: unless you’re in a business with absolutely zero geographic footprint, it kind of doesn’t matter what the national numbers look like.  It’s much better to have a reliable, ground-level estimates so you can understand market-level realities and changes over time.  Things like, which part of the Guadalajara metro area has the highest concentration of high socioeconomic class?  Which cities in the Bajío are experiencing the strongest population growth, and what corner of the city is it the strongest?  Whether you’re in the business of site selection for retail outlets in Mexico, logistics planning, or anything else that has a geographic footprint at its core, you should see what our data has to say.  Reach out to us if you’d like to dig in deeper to GeoAnalitica’s Mexico 2019 demographics.

Cada año, GeoAnalitica hace un recorrido de un área de Mexico, para sacar fotos de las comunidades representadas por nuestras Cuadras de Crecimiento.  Lo hacemos para poder mostrar en nuestra mercadotecnia cómo se ven las Cuadras en la vida cotidiana.  También intentamos reforzar el idea: sin los datos demográficos de las Cuadras (que no se cubren por el Censo), las empresas mexicanas no sabrían ni el dónde ni el cuánto de los consumidores que viven en áreas recién construidas. 

El verano pasado, fuimos al Bajío, un área que ha experimentado mucho crecimiento residencial, un resultado del fuerte crecimiento industrial que ha aumentado y mejorado la economía de la región.  En este blog, vamos a enfocarnos en el sureste de la ciudad de Querétaro.  Residencial del Parque es una comunidad compuesta de varias etapas de desarrollo, que se construyeron uno tras uno desde 2012.  No hay que decir que esta área no fue censada, ni tampoco fue incorporada dentro de ningún AGEB, porque el Censo fue solo un snapshot del año 2010.

Aunque no aparezca en ninguna otra fuente de datos demográficos, Residencial del Parque sí existe, sí crece, y sí es un núcleo de consumidores de clase media.  GeoAnalitica estima que en los 4 Cuadras de Crecimiento que forman esta comunidad, existen unas 4509 personas dentro de 1346 hogares.  Ellos pueden hacer la diferencia entre la decisión de ubicarse en el área y no.

Nuestra metodología estima más que el número de personas y de hogares.  Hay cientos de variables, y entre ellos, lo más pedido es el Nivel Socioeconómico.  Construimos este variable tomando en cuenta estimativas de la vecindad proporcionadas por el gobierno, también con índices de los valores de viviendas con respecto a promedios regionales. En Residencial del Parque, estimábamos un NSE de C y de D+, que a pesar de todo que vimos, parece un poco bajo.  Las casas, la vigilancia, los carros del año, todo representa una clase de C y más alta.   (Ésta es otra propuesta de nuestros recorridos: identificar áreas geográficas en cuales nuestra metodología tiene fracasos, para poder afinarla en el año que viene.)

Después de nuestros recorridos, publicamos las fotos en Mapillary, una plataforma abierta que nos permite compartir los Streetviews (y, también, nuestras fotos les ayudan a la comunidad OSM mejorar sus mapas en estas áreas tan nuevas).  Así, puedes ver lo que vimos en Residencial del Parque, como si estuvieras allí en vivo.  Pasa un par de minutos observando las fotos, y pregúntate: ¿cómo se mejoraría nuestro proceso de selección inmobiliaria si tomara en cuenta el crecimiento que se nota en esta Cuadra de GeoAnalitica?

San Luis Potosí is riding the same wave as so many of its neighbors.  Good quality of life, a stable security situation, and a central location coupled with great infrastructure make for a booming local economy.  The expansion of middle-class jobs in SLP has created a significant demand for new housing, and true to form, developers are building to meet those needs with high-density single-family homes. 

Today, we’ll take a look at Residencial Puerta Real, on the northern edge of SLP.  It is quite literally “on the other side of the periférico”, situated along the urban ring-road in a way that allows its residents easy commuting to industrial outgrowth to the south and business centers downtown.  Puerta Real has been growing piecemeal, with initial phases starting just after Censo 2010, and new phases that -- even to this day – are being completed and sold to SLP’s burgeoning middle class.  (You can take a look at GeoAnalitica’s embedded Mapillary streetviews below, which we shot during our 2019 research trip to the Bajío region.)

Like so many other recent growth stories, you won’t find Residencial Puerta Real in any INEGI dataset.  How could it be, when it didn’t exist the last time data were collected?  Censo 2010 geography teams delineate boundaries (Manzanas, AGEBes and others) about a year before a given census, which means that if a development was not constructed by 2009, it was pretty unlikely to have an AGEB delineated around it.  And, where there’s no AGEB boundary, there simply can’t be any Censo 2010 data to fill it up.

That’s why we developed our own boundaries called Growth Grids, and methodologies to “fill them up” with demographic estimates.  (Readers who have been keeping up with GeoAnalitica can probably recite that whole line of logic by heart.)  This gives the analysts who need it the most – i.e., corporate site selection specialists – the data they need to rationalize a trade area and to evaluate its economics.  And it doesn’t take many Growth Grids to make a material impact on a trade area’s numbers.

Take Puerta Real, for example.  It went from non-existent at the time of Censo 2010, to a 2018 estimate of 1,589 households and 7,426 people.  That’s no small impact, especially considering this is a predominantly C-class area with a smattering of A/B – groups that many consumer-facing brands find a profitable core demographic.  (If you take a look at the embedded marketing materials and details from Puerta Real’s developer, you’ll see evidence of these social classes through the size, configuration and finishes of these new homes.)

If 7,000 “new” people sounds like a big deal to you, let us be the first to say, it’s not.  Well, it’s not nearly as big of a deal as 121,275 people, which are the “new” residents detected just within our Growth Grids, and just within the SLP metro area.  That’s a big deal.  And San Luis Potosí is just one of dozens of growing medium-to-large cities across Mexico, places that once might have been an afterthought for multinational retailers but that have become respectable multi-unit markets in their own right.

On the south side of Aguascalientes city, tucked behind the gargantuan Nissan factory, sits an expansive new residential development geared towards the working class.  Viñedos del Sur is a densely packed community, townhouse-style, with minimal amenities and scarcely even a tree.  Yet despite this agglomeration of household (we estimate nearly 3,200), nobody who lives here shows up in INEGI data, though coincidentally, this neighborhood is just a 15 minute drive from INEGI’s national headquarters.  That’s not to say it’s INEGI’s fault – they are not in the business of annual population estimates, and this neighborhood was bare dirt the last time a Censo was conducted in 2010.

Because INEGI is not set up for estimating the size and location of current-year population, at a micro-level, a different approach is required.  GeoAnalitica’s solution to the problem of “invisible neighborhoods” relies on multiple change-aware sources that help us measure population changes at large levels (like, a municipio), and allocate those changes to the micro-areas in the community that have given evidence of population change.  Sometimes that happens inside an AGEB, but sometimes there’s not even a shape on the map to reference.  Viñedos del Sur, like so many other brand-new communities, gets assigned to one of GeoAnalitica’s 15,000+ Growth Grids, so that they can finally show up on trade area maps.

Adjusted Censo-type data gives a good estimate of people’s base demographics for the current year.  But something more is needed to summarize their consumer potential and socioeconomic level.  By tying in even more independent data sources, GeoAnalitica provides estimates that no other source can match, and at a micro-level.  For example, in Viñedos del Sur and its neighboring communities, we’re seeing a predominant socioeconomic level of D and D+.  Browse through some of our 360 degree streetviews from June of 2019, and we think you’ll agree.

Since Censo 2010, literally hundreds of thousands of young, growing families have set up homes in brand-new communities like this one.  These families are the future of consumption in Mexico, and it would be tragic for marketers and retail operators and strategists to not know where and how many they are.  Stay tuned to this blog for more examples, and reach out to us with questions about the growth areas in Mexico that you’re most interested in.