Data Authenticity: Challenges of Market Surveys in Pakistan

October 23, 2019

In Pakistan, the researchers and surveyors carry out the process of data collection and meaningful information is derived on the basis of this data. The authenticity of data is therefore very crucial but the question here is; whether data authenticity is kept intact or not?

Data Authenticity implies that the data acquired from the real-world scenarios neither should be modified nor should be corrupted after its creation. And in any case, it should exclusively be the outcome of an acquisition process of a real-world scene. The authenticity of data also refers to the essence of what actually is being claimed against the data i.e. what it should be or what it claims to be. Although, the processing of digital data cannot be altogether eradicated it should ensure the meaning/essence is not modified.

Preserving the authenticity of data is the foremost important factor in the fair assessment of any situation, this can later influence decision making or might serve as the foundation for long-term investment. Although, data collected might encounter a number of edits during processing and analysis original script of information should not undergo any modification which might alter or create any possibility for an alteration of data throughout the data lifecycle.

Why is Authentic Data a Challenge to Acquire in Pakistan?

Ace Research has left nearly no area untapped and in Pakistan, a particular phenomenon prevails which by enlarge is the dilemma in the context of data authenticity. As far as reporting is concerned the crisp of content is ensured but the data incorporated in the report might not be fulfilling the requirement or may not be adequate enough for partial decision making. This implies that in processing and analyses of data the original data loses its essence or sometimes it can be another way round, i.e. the data is altogether either infringed with unethical practices or not even acquired from the desired sample size.

The data collected as mentioned earlier serves as the foundation for any sort of decision making, whether it relates to corporate sector, development sector, public sector or etc. the Product and services you are planning to launch, the project you are undertaking for awareness purpose or the selection of candidate for any constituency are the direct outcome of data collection in that particular domain. Therefore, if the authenticity of data is compromised just imagine the consequence of wrong assessment of product/services launch, wrong estimation of fund allocation or nomination of an undeserving candidate.

Ethical issues associated with Data Reporting and Authenticity

  • All the eligible participants are not included in data collection and reporting
  • Analyses of Missing data points
  • All the relevant data is not incorporated in study or report
  • Negative results are withheld and often not reflected in reports
  • Research sponsors influence the reporting of results
  • Actual numbers are replaced with percentages
  • Use of inappropriate statistical test to assess and analyses data
  • Conclusions derived despite unsupported data
  • Exaggeration of results for media

Best Practices recommended for Data Authenticity

Following are some of the practices adopted to ensure data authenticity

  • Differences should be tracked in case of the original data version and in case of editions made into the data. Also, by restricting the unauthorized changes in data and also the loss of information, data authenticity can be kept intact.
  • Term and conditions of data use should be clearly communicated to all the stakeholders of data.
  • The master file should be maintained, its access and right to certain changes should be assigned with due diligence.
  • Researched version and individual versions should be clearly distinguished and saved in respective order.
  • How many versions of a file to keep? How long to keep and how to organize versions should be clearly chalked down.
  • Each data file should be clearly and categorically named in the context of versions as well as editions.
  • A well-preserved document should be maintained for any changes in any version of the data file.
  • The tracking system should be maintained if files are saved in a large database or a variety of locations.

How ACE ensures Data Authenticity?

Ace Research is an Islamabad based market research and customer experience management company. Ace operates with 300 plus field workforce and provides a fully automated online system for Reports, Geo Tracking, Client Dashboard and Mobile Audits to ensure data reliability and authenticity. It has a unique competitive edge in terms of ensuring data authenticity and it is the core priority of the firm to provide the best solution to its clients with the hands-on most authentic and real-time results.

All Market surveys of ACE are conducted through the online system. Surveyors use Android devices to record data and then submit results online. ACE Admin Panel approves and Quality Checks the data and then submits to the client. The client can have one or multiple dashboards with real-time results visible in the form of pre-installed graphs and tables

ACE Mobile audits can be beneficial in numerous ways like; it Eliminates fraud, you know exactly where and when data is collected with the help of time and GPS stamping on each response. Whether you are online or offline, the surveys and data collection can still be completed irrespective of internet facility. Data validity is ensured during entry and again in the Quality assurance stage.

How to Efficiently Manage Data Collection?

October 23, 2019

In Market Research there are certain key areas that need a lot of conscious efforts to keep the essence and productivity of whole activity intact. Ace Research put great stress on data collection as it is a very sensitive part of the whole research and demands a thorough understanding as well as a market assessment of numerous factors as to analyze the availability, access, confidentiality, transparency, and adherence to pre-defined norms and standards of data collection. furthermore, we have compiled some key points, that should be taken into account before formulating any research Strategy.

Responsibilities of Data Collectors

  • Before initiating a new survey, determine whether data already available from your organization or publicly available data can be used to meet an emerging information need.
  • One who has assigned with the task of data collection or team at large should be familiar with relevant laws, regulations, or administrative procedures that may affect the data collection activity. Also, Make respondents aware of these laws if they might affect participation, responses, or uses of the data.
  • Take steps to minimize the time, cost, and effort required of data providers. Schedule the data collection, to the extent possible, at the convenience of the data providers and with adequate time to respond.
  • Learn the work cycles of the respondents. Make sure the respondent can provide accurate data for the requested item.
  • Keep the survey as short as possible. Ensure that the response burden does not exceed a reasonable length and is justified by the use of the data.  Examine each item in the data collection instrument to make sure that the information is needed and will be used.
  • Avoid requesting information that is of marginal use. Avoid requesting data that can be obtained from another available survey or database.
  • Whenever possible, test the survey for “understandability” and respondent effort through focus groups, cognitive laboratory sessions, or pilot testing. The purpose of these activities is to ensure that: Each item is understandable to the respondent and technical terms used are appropriate to the respondent. The questions are clear and unambiguous to the respondent, items elicit a single response and survey is not too much of a burden for the respondent.
  • Seek periodic review of the survey instrument from experienced, knowledgeable individuals.

Designing the Data Collection Instrument

  • Provide clear and detailed instructions for completing the data collection instrument.
  • Provide definitions and clarifying information for individual items and terms. Make definitions of data elements consistent with standard definitions and analytic conventions (i.e., calculations or methodologies) when appropriate and feasible.
  • Determine whether another organization is already collecting data related to the items you plan to collect; if so, obtain a copy of that survey and consider using the same definitions and analytic conventions as a starting point for your survey. Any deviations from accepted usage should be explained.
  • Indicate subpopulations to include and/or exclude in the reporting. Be clear about the date or time period the survey should reflect.
  • Use standard language. Avoid jargon and abbreviations.  Keep questions short and simple, make categories as concrete as possible.  Use simple and exact terms. If response categories are supposed to be mutually exclusive and exhaustive, make sure all possible categories are included on the survey.  If in doubt about whether categories are exhaustive, include a response option of “other, please specify.”
  • If data may be unknown or missing, be sure to include an “unknown/missing” option. Provide a “not applicable” response for questions that may not be applicable to all respondents. Do not combine two separate ideas inappropriately and request a single response.
  • Design the item sequence of the survey such that it increases the respondent’s ability to complete the survey. Keep topic-related questions together and provide transitions between topics. Be sure that return address, fax number, and contact information are included on the form itself as well as in accompanying the letter.  Consider including an addressed, postage-paid envelope to return the survey.

Distributing the Data Collection Instrument

  • Provide multiple options for respondents to submit data, including electronically, Alert respondents to any changes in long-standing survey items.
  • Include a section on the survey for respondents to suggest changes or point out problems. If respondents are asked to submit multiple documents or other materials, provide a checklist for each of the items to be submitted.

Explanatory information that should accompany the Survey

  • Purposes of the data collection activities and how data will be used Also, Importance of respondents’ participation and Confidentiality of response, if appropriate.
  • The methodology used for data collection. Describe how missing data will be treated.
  • If the database or survey response is to be supplemented with information from other sources, describe those data and their sources.
  • If survey instruments vary for different types of institutions, describe the significant differences. Indicate how many years of data will be publicly available or archived.

Survey Follow-up ‘Perform edit checks on the data’

  • Identify and correct or delete strange or discrepant data, missing data, or, if appropriate, unusually high or low data values. Reconcile any data inconsistencies with the respondent and rectify, if necessary, in the database.
  • If appropriate, provide the respondent with a verification copy of the information or draft report before publication; make any requested changes before publication.
  • Provide the respondent with a summary of results or final copy of the report, or if feasible, the database itself.
  • Consider sending thank you notes to respondents.

Reporting and Publication

  • Describe the sampling methodology and sampling universe used in the study.
  • Indicate when the data were collected and/or the date of publication (month and year at a minimum), so that readers can tell how current the information is.
  • Report response rates for the survey as a whole as well as for individual items.
  • If data are imputed for non-responses, indicate the methodology used and the percent of cases that were imputed.
Market Research

Be Aware! Your Market Research Data May Not be Authentic

October 23, 2019

Market Research Usefulness?

Organizations are in a run these days to acquire a competitive and valuable position among their competitors in the market. To earn a good place, one must ensure that their services and products cater to the needs of customers. Existing customers should be retained and prospective ones should be attracted by first assessing their needs and thereupon providing them the goods they need.

Markets have become very dynamic and with rapid technological advancement, new features are being introduced and outputs are customized to meet the varying demand. The customer is more aware than ever and switches frequently between alternatives with the intention to get better output and value.

These changes in market dynamics and customers buying patterns have urged the marketers to investigate the paradigm shift and simultaneously, comprehend what factors are leading to change in buying habits.

What is Market Research?

Market Research is the Systematic analysis of market segments along with the prime focus on customer’s perception, habits, and interests. Ace Research has ascertained long before the need for transparent and quality research, that captures the pattern in terms of demographic segregation, psychographic segregation and nevertheless, the perception and overall environmental impacts on the decision making of the customer.

Data Authenticity Issues in Market Research

In Pakistan, we have numerous Market Research companies, providing services to a large number of clients. Several modules offered include Mystery Shopping, Retail Audits, Brand Health Tracking, Activation Evaluation, Pre and Post Product or Service evaluations, Consumer Researches, Monitoring, and Evaluation etc.  The primary goal of conducting all these researches is to identify the customer’s point of view and based on these assessment strategies are being designed and formulated to improve brand perception and add value to existing services.

Recently a Political Survey has been carried out to observe the public mandate enjoyed by representatives contesting General Elections 2018. This study was limited to very few constituencies but proved to be a whistleblower and a Question mark on the findings.  The data revealed by a survey by no means matched the public perception and ultimately lead to the inappropriate or undesirable outcome.

Data authenticity! This term has put so many in stressful situations.

“Without fair and transparent assessment, it is invalid to devise strategies and base your decision making on it. Without accuracy and authenticity, you are moving in the wrong direction and might lose in the long run if the impact remained insignificant in the short run.”

It is, therefore, very crucial as well as of utmost importance for organizations to understand Unethical Practices being carried out by Research companies to put together data for your assessment.

Organizations usually have customer services and customer insights department to keep a check on quality compliances as set by the company along with customer retention and to ensure the valuable relationship with customers. But unfortunately, in Pakistan to satisfy the compliance requirements, quality assurance departments infringe the data acquired from research companies just to exhibit a good picture of their performance which is not the case actually. Market Research companies are third-party companies that run an assessment to identify the loopholes in customer satisfaction and quality compliances but owing to the flaw in the organizational setup in particularly the delegation of command that in essence should be between senior management in decision-making capacity and Market Research Firms.

Data acquired by Research companies are initially acquired by the customer services departments i.e. point of contact between the company and research firm and after completion of an assessment, this is presented to other stakeholders.  This problem can be catered if the data acquired in the first place not only reach customer services department but also senior management, decision makers and stakeholders.

Fieldwork force are the key assets of any Market Research Company and to acquire a large volume of data, the workforce is being trained accordingly and mobilized across the country for fair representation of all areas, as per research requirement. It can be confined to one province or town or maybe a single sector in Islamabad.  But most of the well-reputed Research companies have no policy statements implemented in true to spirit to ensure accurate and authentic data collection. Data collected is often fabricated and manipulated. In most cases, the data entry is done without efforts being made to mobilize the workforce and this is a market dilemma and this should be addressed. The question arises, how data authenticity should be ensured?

Client companies should have close liaison-ship with their respective market research companies and Data authenticity should be checked at every stage of data collection. For this very purpose GPS coordinates, videos and audios of interviews, pictures of location etc. are several means of ensuring data authenticity.

Similarly, if you are running an assessment to check the quality compliance of your franchises, the shoppers who are being assigned the assessment often negotiate with franchise owners and managers in exchange for monetary benefits and the whole data collection is jeopardized.

Also, it is common in cases like surveys and form fillings, where data is being filled by few individuals irrespective of the importance of such assessments for clients in decision making. In such cases, companies should designate a person or two to cross-check the data against references being mentioned and a certain sample of data should always be cross-checked.

“Market Research companies dodge their clients by presenting very glossy, attractive and appealing presentation and reports, backed by manipulated and unauthentic data.”

It is, therefore, a responsibility of an Organization if they truly care for their Quality compliances and customer satisfaction to thoroughly assess the Research reports and in case of any ambiguity, the whole process should be scrutinized. Although it will cost you time but remember Research is often done less frequently but all your future decision, budgeting, and strategies are based on it. So be wise and be Alert.

Essentials of Market Research Analysis

October 23, 2019

To give Market Research a meaningful purpose, Ace Research’s primary objective of carrying out any study is to draw relevant, up-to-date and decisive information. Whether it is a quantitative or qualitative study the spirit lies in the analysis of the data which derives business Intelligence. For an acute understanding of market dynamics data analysis is actually a product of clearly demonstrated business objectives of doing any particular research; problem statement that needs to be addressed like for e.g. why do the clients after taking loans, are not turning up next time, precisely, what is the churn rate?

 The next phase is to collect the data form sources which are data hub for any organization. Data could be collected from primary sources or secondary sources depending upon the type and need of research. If there is data available and our requirement is to draw a relationship or make what if? Analysis so, we rely on secondary data but if our objective is to carry out an exclusive study that has no existing data available or data available is not sufficient enough to base our findings on it so, in that case, we create a questionnaire, covering all information areas that we want to explore.

Once data is collected from sources, we need to arrange that data in a format that is sortable, clean and converted into one format. Cleaned data which has no conflicts, errors and formatting issues is now ready for data analysis. In data analysis we determine the relationships, causal effects, find patterns and explore any aspect relevant to the research objective.

After thorough data analysis, the conclusion can be drawn as if what are the possible outcomes and predictions of the research and this is ultimately summarized in a report which is a compact and comprehensive document carrying all research findings.

Data analysis is the process of evaluating data using analytical and statistical tools to discover useful information and aid in business decision making. There are a several data analysis methods including data mining, text analytics, business intelligence and data visualization.

Data Mining

Data mining is a method of data analysis for discovering patterns in large data sets using the methods of statistics, artificial intelligence, machine learning and databases. The goal is to transform raw data into understandable business information. These might include identifying groups of data records (also known as cluster analysis), or identifying anomalies and dependencies between data groups.

Anomaly detection can process huge amounts of data (“big data”) and automatically identify outlier cases, possibly for exclusion from decision making or detection of fraud (e.g. bank fraud).

Text Analytics

Text analytics is the process of deriving useful information from text. It is accomplished by processing unstructured textual information, extract meaningful numerical indices from the information and make the information available to statistical and machine learning algorithms for further processing.

Examples of text analytics applications:

  • Analyzing open-ended survey responses. These surveys are of an exploratory nature and include open-ended questions related to the topic in question. The respondents can then express their views without being constrained to a particular response format.
  • Investigate competitors by crawling their websites. This could be used to derive information about competitors’ activities.
  • Security applications which can process log files for intrusion detection.

Business Intelligence

Business intelligence transforms data into actionable intelligence for business purposes and may be used in an organization’s strategic and tactical business decision making. It offers a way for people to examine trends from collected data and derive insights from it.

Some examples of business intelligence in used today:

  • An organization’s operating decisions such as product placement and pricing.
  • Identifying new markets, assessing the demand and suitability of products for different market segments.
  • Budgeting and rolling forecasts.
  • Using visual tools such as heat maps, pivot tables and geographical mapping.

Data Visualization

Data visualization refers very simply to the visual representation of data. In the context of data analysis, it means using the tools of statistics, probability, pivot tables and other artifacts to present data visually. It makes complex data more understandable and usable.

Increasing amounts of data are being generated by a number of sensors in the environment (referred to as “Internet of Things” or “IOT”). This data (referred to as “big data”) presents challenges in understanding which can be eased by using the tools of Data visualization.

Why Retail Audits Are Important?

October 23, 2019

Retail audits give companies the opportunity to analyze product placement and display in order to maximize sales. In fact, retail audit is just important for a brand’s health, as regular checkups for a human’s health. Unfortunately, retail auditing is often reduced to an inventory of products in stock and on shelves, to prevent out-of-stocks and ensure availability for customers. Although this part of auditing is essential, there are many other types of audit data that can give valuable insights to the management, allowing evaluating ROI, advertising impact, effectiveness of promotions, and marketing trends. 

How to Maximize the Efficiency of Retail Audits?

Organizing regular retail audits can be challenging. Traditional paper-based retail audits are often time-consuming and inefficient. Advanced technologies make conducting your own retail audits easier and more affordable than ever using a retail audit software solution. Today you can perform retail audits using just your tablet or smartphone. Simply have your field reps upload a retail audit app with a customizable retail data collection forms, and start receiving real-time, highly accurate retail audit data on everything that needs to be checked.

Retail audit software helps retail professionals manage and streamline their auditing activities. A mobile device, such as a tablet or a smartphone, running a retail audit software solution, allows field reps to collect retail data with ease. A retail audit software solution allows not only creating an instant electronic record of the visit performed, but it also provides instant insights for the management. This reduces the time between identifying a situation that requires attention and correcting it. Paperless retail audits also allow eliminating awkward data reentry, saving time and minimizing mistakes.

Why Choose Retail Audit Software?

Ace Research suggests that, if you are looking for the most efficient way to plan and manage your retail audit activities, start with adopting proper retail audit software. Ace Research’s retail audit software is a complete mobile retail data collection solution designed to collect all types of store data.

It provides the most complete set of tools for retail auditing in one great package. Through the implementation of a structured approach for retail visits and tasks, this software simplifies data collection and analysis. Due to our retail audit software’s intuitive design, even the most complex auditing procedures are made simple.

The Benefits of Retail Audit Software

  • Eliminate paperwork – retail data is fully synced between field teams and the office
  • Increase field reps productivity – reduced data-collection time and no time spent on reporting, instant photo-reports and route optimization
  • Prevent fraud – focus your field activities using time tracking and GPS monitoring features
  • Boost revenues – product catalog, orders tool
  • Great usability – easy and efficient app for daily use, user-friendly interface, process-guided task navigation for field reps.

Retail auditing is one of the basic aspects of retail management. Ace Research’s retail audit software lets you easily coordinate all the stages of your auditing operations to improve your retail management and enhance the productivity of your field teams.

It’s Time to Track Your Brands Health

October 23, 2019

Brands health studies are a great way to measure and track the performance of your brand. These studies provide several benefits: a snapshot of current brand performance vs. competitors; the impact of a specific marketing campaign; and most importantly, a barometer of long-term brand performance trends.  Brand health studies typically measure KPIs among both prospects and customers, including aided and unaided brand awareness, advertising recall, brand consideration, satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy.

A well-designed Brands Health study can be an invaluable resource.  However, it can become stale if results remain flat quarter over quarter, which sometimes leads to disinterest and underutilization among your brand team.  

Each aspect of brands health is important in its own way. Looking at the topic as a whole gives you the bigger picture to make it clear where your strengths and weaknesses are. For example, your brand awareness might be great, but if you don’t know whether it’s positive or negative awareness, you’re missing half the picture.

If you consider all the factors together you can work out if your brand is unhealthy, fine, or thriving (or whatever scale you want to use). From there you can take specific actions.

If it’s unhealthy, your brand is actively damaging your organisation. Using the metrics you’re tracking you’ll be able to see why this happening and how to stop it. When it’s thriving, you can find out how to keep this going. And when it’s fine you can look for improvements.

Essentially it’s about getting a full understanding of your brand and how you can use it to your benefit.

 Five Ways to Track Your Brands Health

Include questions that measure emotions. 

Ace Research put forth the reasons to outshine in the market when it comes to brand health factor. Most brand trackers awareness, consideration, satisfaction, and so on. Adding questions that measure emotional or latent associations with the brand can be a valuable addition. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways:

Ask an open-ended question about which words or emotions best describe your brand and key competitors.

Ask respondents to rate how your brand (and competitor brands) make them feel, using a sliding scale between two opposing emotions – i.e. valued vs. disrespected, secure vs. vulnerable, etc.). These questions can be particularly valuable if your brand campaign relies on an emotional hook – allowing you to measure customer associations with emotions elicited by the campaign.

If you are open to a longer survey, consider including an Implicit Association Test (IAT) battery of questions. IAT is a technique that measures attitudes and beliefs that respondents are unable to report and enables you to compare implicit associations to key attributes among competitive brands.

Include a rotating module of “Hot Topic” questions. 

Adding a rotating set of new questions every field period is an effective way to add fresh insights while not impacting the ability to trend existing questions. Rotating topic areas should focus on specific brand initiatives taking place that quarter – i.e. recall of a new spokesperson, interest in a new offering, or experience with a new marketing channel. Consulting with your internal brand stakeholders on which topics they are most eager to learn about will dramatically increase their engagement. Add these questions to the end of your survey to avoid biasing the core trended questions.

Integrate tracker study results with other brand data. 

Too often, brand health trackers are presented without sufficient context, raising questions about survey results and how they compare with other brand performance data. Why did awareness go up in this region? What accounts for that competitor’s sudden improvement in brand consideration? The list goes on.   By contextualizing tracker results with other important brand data – including advertising spend, sales, customer service data, social listening, competitive intelligence and other custom research studies – you can provide stakeholders with a more holistic view of brand performance. Ideally, integrate these sources into an executive-level scorecard or dashboard.

Measure ongoing advertising campaigns. 

In addition to measuring long-term brand health metrics, your tracker can also be used to measure recall and perceptions of in-market ad campaigns. Adding a few questions on current campaigns (at the end of the survey) will keep your stakeholders better engaged. Consider showing visuals, taglines, or even videos from an ongoing campaign to understand what is working (or not working) among your target audience. If you have any additional “space” in your survey, you can even test a few key copy elements for future campaigns. While you need to be careful not to make your tracker a “kitchen sink”, integrating a few simple questions like these can save budget and avoid the need for a separate study.

Include a video or qualitative follow-ups. 

A good tracker should raise questions from your team. Some will require follow up to answer. Consider interviewing specific tracker respondents as a survey follow-up to dive deeper into issues that need more clarity. Or, if you are just looking to provide some additional depth, offer a subset of respondents the option to provide video responses to open-ended questions.

Now that you have some ideas for how to keep your brand health tracker fresh, it’s time to consider implementation.

Challenges Faced by Banks in Conducting Mystery Shopping in Pakistan

October 23, 2019

Among numerous many ways of checking upon the value being delivered to your customers, mystery shopping is the most sought evaluation check. Customer’s point of contact makes it plausible for each interaction to be either a successful new customer on board or loss of prospective one. For each interaction to be productive and customers get all the value intended for them, mystery shopping in disguise is the best assessment. 

Why Banks do Mystery shopping:

Over the years, Ace Research has been in close liaison with banks to carry out researches to meet their requirements. Banks have strict compliances not to meet the interests of shareholders but the prime stakeholders i.e. government in terms of compatibility with the general rule of business. State regulatory authorities in recent times have adopted a stern policy to protect the right of customers and also to promote fair and transparent practices in the industry.  Mystery shopping in the banking industry assesses the customer’s interaction with a bank; it rates the satisfaction of customers visit and highlights areas that can potentially discourage them from keeping a sustainable relationship with the bank.  

At the center of the customer experience is the bank-customer interface. The customer side of this interface can be measured with a variety of research tools, including: surveys, social media monitoring, and customer comment tools. The bank side of the bank-customer interface is best measured by mystery shopping. Bank mystery shopping focus on the employee/ behavioral side of the bank-customer interface, measuring employee behaviors, and, if well designed, determines the importance of each employee behavior in terms of driving the customer experience objectives of the bank.

How is it performed?

The foundation of a best-in-class bank mystery shopping program is observations of behaviors – behaviors which are objective, observable and empirical. Best-in-class programs focus on observing specific sales and service behaviors expected from customer-facing staff to both measure and motivate these behaviors.

While empirical observations of objective behaviors are the foundation of best-in-class bank mystery shopping, observations of these behaviors are only an important first step. Customer experience managers need to prioritize the importance of these behaviors in terms of their ability help the bank achieve its customer experience objectives, otherwise there is no way of knowing if these behaviors are aligned with broader bank goals. This provides a means of prioritizing investments in motivating these behaviors, and gives clear direction as to their relative importance.


Another call to action element is subjective comments. These comments are designed to capture unaided top-of-mind explanations from the shopper regarding why they felt the way they did about the experience. This is captured with an open-ended question. Beyond a simple narrative of the experience, these questions are designed to capture raw unstructured data from the shopper about why they felt the way they did about the experience.

Essentials of Bank Mystery shopping:

  • The role of the branch has been evolving for decades. We believe the branch is currently still the cornerstone of establishing the customer relationship. Mystery shopping branch assessment is an excellent tool to measure and motivate the sales and service behaviors you expect.
  • Unlike call monitoring, mystery shopping of contact centers gives managers a unique opportunity to evaluate the customer experience using predetermined scenarios.
  • Competitive mystery shopping can achieve two results. First, benchmark sales and service behaviors relative to the competition. Second, identify best practices in terms of driving purchase intent or loyalty.
  • Internal bank mystery shopping evaluates service provided within the organization. These assessments identify bottlenecks within the internal service delivery.
  • LifeCycle assessment looks at the customer experience in a more holistic way. In this, shoppers open an account; conduct a number of different transactions and inquiries over an extended period of time.
  • Online webpage gives clients insight into navigation, ease of use, and the overall online experience.
  • Like online shops, mystery shopping of mobile channels evaluates navigation, ease of use, and the overall mobile experience.

Benefits of Banks Mystery Shopping:

Measurement & Motivation

Beyond simply measuring sales and customer service behaviors, bank mystery shopping provides an additional benefit for financial institutions – motivation. Just the act of measuring compliance to behavioral expectations increases the frequency of expected behaviors.

Best-in-class bank mystery shopping measures and motivates the behaviors which matter most. Those which drive the bank’s overall customer experience objectives, aligning behaviors to the overall customer experience objectives.

Role of Qualitative Research Techniques in Market Research

October 23, 2019

Are you conducting market research? Qualitative research is an important first step in the market research process. Ace Research has explored that Qualitative research is important for gaining a broad understanding of the underlying reasons and motivations behind consumer decisions.

What is Qualitative Market Research?

Qualitative market research is any research conducted using observation or unstructured questioning.

While quantitative research answers the what, where, when and who of decision making, qualitative research also answers the why and how.

Qualitative vs. Quantitative Research

The goal of qualitative research is to gain insights into the deeper motives behind consumer purchases.

The goal of quantitative research, on the other hand, is to quantify and generalize the results so that the marketer can come to a final conclusion about the best course of action.

Why use qualitative research as opposed to quantitative research?

Well, first of all, qualitative research should not be used instead of quantitative research. The two are complementary to each other.

  • Qualitative research in and of itself is not conclusive. However, it is used to explain quantitative research results.
  • Conduct market research when more structured research is not possible

Qualitative research is a good first step to take when conducting your market research. Let’s explore how it is done.

  • In-depth Interviews

An individual interview can be conducted over the phone, Skype, or in person. The idea is to ask your ideal user (or an existing customer) a series of questions and follow ups to learn what motivates them to buy a product like yours.

You should go in to the interview with some questions prepared ahead of time, but don’t feel like you need to stick to a script. If they say something interesting, ask follow up questions that dig deeper. Really try to put yourself in their shoes, and try to figure out what makes them tick.

  • Focus Groups

Focus groups are generally conducted in-person. These groups are meant to provide a safe and comfortable environment for your users to talk about their thoughts and feelings surrounding your product.

The advantage to using in-person focus groups is that you get to see the consumer’s verbal and non-verbal reaction to your product or advertising. The other advantage is that the different members of the group can bounce off each other’s thoughts and ideas, which mean you’ll get even greater insights.

You can use focus groups to:

  • Test product usage or tasting
  • Explore the general concept for your product
  • Evaluate your advertising copy and imagery
  • Explore new packaging ideas
  • Observations or “Shop-Along”

An in-person observation of shopping behavior (or a “shop-along”) allows you to actually watch the consumer react to your product in-store. This way, you get to see their actual shopping behavior, as opposed to just what they would claim on a written survey.

One way that this is useful is by highlighting challenges that arise from shelf display issues, clutter, or out of stock issues. You may also interact with consumers to get deeper insights during the shopping process, to get feedback on a package design, for example.

  • Lifestyle Immersion and Real World Dialogue

Lifestyle immersion is when you attend an event, such as a party or a family gathering. This allows you to get an uninterrupted view into your user’s attitudes and behaviors. This is another great way to get candid insight in a comfortable, familiar setting.

During these activities, observe your users having a dialogue with their friends. Listening in to real world conversations is a really powerful way to get a deeper understanding of their desires, frustrations and motivations.

  • Journal or Diary

Have your user (or potential user) keep a journal or a diary to document their experience with your topic or your product.

This can be handwritten or digital. Either way, it will allow you to capture your user’s actual voice, which is extremely valuable for marketing copy.

  • Online Focus Groups

Online focus groups are similar to in-person focus groups, except that they are more cost efficient and allow you to reach more people.

Use social media to your advantage by creating communities of people who are interested in your topic, and fostering a conversation. Then, simply observe the dialogue. You’ll gain a lot of interesting insights!

How to Analyze Qualitative Data

At this point you may be wondering, how do you actually analyze qualitative data after you’ve gathered it?

Since qualitative data is unstructured, it can be tricky to draw conclusions from it, let alone present your findings. While it is not meant to be conclusive in and of itself, here are a few tips for analyzing qualitative research data…

  • Summarize the Key Points

For interviews and focus groups, have the moderator write up some key points that they heard. For example: “Common concerns among participants in regard to our pizza were cheese overuse, greasiness, and bland sauce.”

  • Code Responses

“Code” the unstructured data into something that can be summarized with tables or charts. For example, some coded responses to the question “When do you wear a watch?” might be 1 – never, 2 – once in a while, 3 – everyday, etc.

Challenges Faced in Conducting Educational Sector Research in Pakistan

October 23, 2019

  • Challenges in Pakistan

In Pakistan a developing country by narrative, all the private and public sector organizations are struggling with a handful of resource deficiencies. Unskilled labor, illiteracy, health issues and financial instability to name few are some of the root causes for emerging challenges.

Analysts and economists after thorough analysis of economic paradigm consider a lack of proper infrastructure to deliver quality education as the primary factor to cater the issues faced by all sectors in the country. Now the next challenge is to access the level of education system prevailing in the country and to provide sufficient support and facilitation to make a sustainable uplift in educational sector. To make this happen, basic drill is to carry out a large scale research encompassing all educational institutes of the country.

  • Need for Research

Ace Research has recently concluded that to bring advancement in the educational sector and to promote new ways of learning and teaching, research is to be undertaken but it’s never been an easy task and has its own pain that needs to be endured. In Pakistan, the education sector has yet to witness any revolutionary change which is inevitable if structural changes are made bottom to top.

  • Challenges Faced in Data Collection from Schools/Colleges
  • Private school Associations

If you are planning for any survey you better be aware that most of the schools in Pakistan are part of any association. Associations help schools in a variety of ways in the community in which they operate. But owing to lack of proper record and coordination by respective associations, the data is not either accessible or kept confidential.

  • Government Institutes

The dilemma of organized data entails government institutions as well. Except for one region or two the data is not being maintained by any institution. Fresh census is yet to be run and data which is available is often not shared.

  • Outdated Data

Data acquired from sources such as government, private school associations and online sources are most of the times outdated and irrelevant.  Upon approaching by means of strong referrals the data shared by competing authorities turn out to be outdated or the concerned person is not located. This implies the database is not kept updated for reasons unknown.

  • Challenges Faced in Approaching Schools/Colleges
  • Ghost Schools

It is a very ill phenomenon that due to no proper checks or routine scrutiny the loopholes in system are identified and exploited. In the rural part of the country, schools are enlisted on the government records but on ground, there is no existence same goes for teachers/staff as well.

  • Management’s Non – Cooperation

Either approached on Telephone or in person the school owners, management and staffs are unwilling to cooperate unless requested and followed up several times about the scope of work and critical need of their valuable input. And there is no guarantee that Information provided by them is accurate or reliable regarding learning patterns, educational products, and services used to enhance the productivity of the educational sector.

  • Locating the Schools

It is one of the most exhausting tasks that require a lot of resources to approach the schools scattered across nooks and crooks of the country. Addresses most of the times are not accurate or schools have shifted but the update has not been maintained.

  • Brief Stat of Education Sector in Pakistan

A recent survey of private schools across Pakistan has observed that approx. 26% of the schools are located in the Urban region and 39 percent in Rural regions, while the remaining schools are located in Peri-urban areas.  Out of these schools around 30% have dedicated internet connection and the remaining don’t have internet access whereas, only 20% have computers for the use of students.

  • Incomplete information Sharing

The gap is realized at the point when survey questions are not answered by schools and information is no shared. They are unwilling to cooperate and it can be due to the lack of research awareness across masses and its necessity for developing customized and updated educational services.

  • Fear of data being shared with competing authorities/government organization like FBR

Schools have certain reservation regarding data sharing, due to recent development when Chief Justice of Pakistan had called for a crackdown against schools charging higher fees. This has made schools suspicious about the research drill. They fear the data provided might be shared with competing authorities thus leading to scrutiny of schools on different forums.

  • Lack of IT infrastructure for centralized management

Schools lack IT infrastructure to keep the idea of decentralization at bay. Online website, social media presence except for a few prominent chains was not found for any of the private schools across Pakistan.

  • Conclusion and Recommendations:

For the survey to be effective as a whole, there are numerous potholes that need to be addressed. Simultaneously, there is on the part of schools that few necessary changes are immediately sought to streamline the process of standardizing the education process and service providers. IT infrastructure should be developed and a centralized database should be maintained provincially to keep all the record for public access. This will allow catering of complaints related to ghost schools and staff and also educational curriculum followed by each school will be on record to streamline the standards of educational institutes. Centralized management should also create a geo-tagging to help in ascertaining the location of schools for accessibility.

 Policies aimed at schools should be clearly communicated to all authorities and uniformly implemented to minimize the fear among masses regarding possible action of competing authorities in case of default.

Surveys and researches should be promoted by the private and public sector alike as it creates an atmosphere of awareness and helps in tapping possible and potential avenues for resource utilization.

Mystery Shopper

How to Be a Good Mystery Shopper?

October 23, 2019

Mystery shoppers are required to read all of the instructions they are given at the beginning of their assignments. They are also asked to review the form they will be completing so they know exactly what they should be looking and listening for as they conduct their shops. Being prepared is a critical component for being successful in this business. We find that our best shoppers always take the time to complete this step. We then ask the shoppers to fill out their evaluation forms which are usually found online with most mystery shopping companies, paying close attention to due dates. From time to time, secret shopping companies may need to ask the shopper additional questions about their experiences so we ask that the mystery shopper make themselves available to provide this information should it be necessary.

Primary Requirement (Anonymity)

A good mystery shopper is always anonymous. A shopper should be able to visit the same location more than once without being detected by the staff. Unless specifically asked to by the client, a shopper should never announce him/herself as a mystery shopper when on a shopping engagement; however, there are other ways a shopper can compromise his/her identity during a shop.

In order to maintain anonymity during a shop assignment:

  • Make an effort to appear like any other shopper in the store.
  • Do not take any of the paperwork associated with the shop onto the premises.
  • Do not take notes while you may be in sight of employees.
  • If you need to take notes to help you remember details, go to a place where you will be out of sight, such as the restroom or your car.
  • Do not ask employees questions that a typical shopper would not ask.
  • Do not stare at nametags.

Occasionally, clients report that a shopper was identified by store personnel. In such cases, the client does not allow the shopper to shop there again and the client might not accept a report for that engagement. If a report is not accepted, the client will not pay the shopper for the shop.

What kind of person would make a good secret shopper?

Market Viewpoint rates someone as a good shopper who has the following qualities:

  • Honesty and Integrity
  • Observational skills
  • Writing skills
  • Listening skills
  • Follow-up skills

We also seek out those who are deadline oriented, take the time to read through all of their instructions, can work independently, accept responsibility, and use common sense.

Mystery shopping is serious business. It is work that has responsibilities like any other work situation but it can be very rewarding experiences for someone who enjoys working in a flexible, challenging, and unique environment. The reports that mystery shoppers produce are used to coach and counsel employees for poor behavior or reward employees for top performance. The reports submitted by our shoppers can have an impact on the profitability of a company or on someone’s career and it is for those reasons that we ask shoppers to take this process very seriously. In the end, the work they submit will make a difference. Ace Research has experienced in numerous projects related to mystery shopping, that how certain misconceptions and unethical practices affect the quality of reports as well as the credibility of a mystery shopper.

Unethical practices can cost you a job

  • Unethical practices are always traced back as there are several tiers of the Quality check. So, assuming to remain in disguise for long is mere a wrong judgment and misconception.
  • Quality of reports is assessed on every level i.e. form reporting to the verification of receipts and authentication of data.
  • Results, if found ambiguous, are scrutinized thoroughly and if any malpractice or unethical action observed the shoppers are made aware immediately and if required necessary action is being taken often leading to disqualification and halting reimbursement of assignment dues.
  • CCTV footages and onsite authentication of visits are acquired if unethical practices observed.
  • Shopper rotations are frequently done to reduce reporting biases and unwanted practices during site visits.
  • Shoppers seeking loopholes might get away in the short term but in the long term due to strict course of quality assurance, their activities get apparent.
  • If found in breach of any legal and ethical requirement, shoppers are warned strictly and in case found guilty they will lose the job.