Rise of Mystery Shopping in Pakistan: What Brands are Learning

November 19, 2025

Introduction

Mystery shopping has shifted from a niche evaluation tactic to a central performance tool in Pakistan’s business landscape. As local and international brands face sharper competition and rising customer expectations, they are turning to mystery shopping to understand their service gaps in real time. The practice has grown steadily across retail, banking, food service, telecommunications, and even healthcare. This rise is tied to a noticeable change in how Pakistani consumers behave. They compare experiences, share opinions freely, and reward brands that deliver consistency. Companies that used to rely on internal impressions now seek the neutral, ground level insights that mystery shoppers provide.

This article examines why mystery shopping has accelerated in Pakistan, what brands are learning from it, and how firms like ACE Research are helping businesses translate findings into tangible improvements.

A Shift in Consumer Power

The modern Pakistani consumer carries a powerful tool in their pocket. Social platforms and online marketplaces have made customer opinions highly visible. When a single negative experience can reach thousands of potential customers, businesses have become far more attentive to service quality. Mystery shopping offers a structured way to evaluate what customers experience before the public does. Brands use it to catch flaws early, reinforce what is working well, and benchmark their service levels against competitors.

In many cases, companies believed they understood their customers until they saw objective reports from mystery shoppers. These reports often show that service delivery varies across branches, staff members, or times of day. The growing emphasis on customer centered strategies has made these findings more valuable than ever.

Expanding Across Industries

The earliest adopters of mystery shopping in Pakistan were mostly multinationals including fashion retailers and food chains. Banks, oil marketing companies and FMCGs also conduct regular mystery shopping. Today the practice spans a much wider range of sectors.

Banks use it to measure teller interactions, complaint handling, and cross selling behavior. Telecom operators rely on it to evaluate franchise performance and frontline knowledge. Hospitals and diagnostic centers employ mystery patients to ensure compliance with service protocols and hygiene standards. Supermarkets want to assess checkout efficiency, stocking accuracy, and customer guidance. Even government facilitated service centers now monitor user experience through third party audits.

This expansion reflects a broader recognition that service quality is no longer optional. Every industry that interacts directly with the public needs visibility into what actually happens at the customer interface.

What Brands Are Learning

Brands in Pakistan are discovering that customers notice small details. They value focused staff, short waiting times, transparent information, and consistent processes. Mystery shopping has highlighted several patterns.

First, consumers judge the entire journey from greeting to departure. Companies that pay attention to only one stage of the customer experience miss significant weaknesses. Second, customers expect the same quality across all branches. A strong experience in one location followed by a weak experience in another can damage overall trust. Third, training and product knowledge are often uneven. Many frontline employees perform well when supervised, yet struggle under pressure or when asked about technical details. Mystery shopping exposes these inconsistencies in a way that internal evaluations rarely do.

Most importantly, brands are learning how service issues impact revenue. A slow counter, a poorly explained promotion, or an unhelpful employee can directly reduce conversions. Businesses that once treated customer service as a soft metric now use mystery shopping data to make financial decisions.

Local Factors Driving Growth

A few Pakistan specific trends have accelerated the adoption of mystery shopping. Urbanization has concentrated large segments of the population in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, and Faisalabad, increasing competition among brands. Greater exposure to international standards has raised expectations for quality and convenience. Rising disposable income in middle class households has shifted attention toward experience and not just price.

At the same time, the retail environment has changed. Mall culture, franchise expansion, and digital integration have made consistency more challenging. Branch managers can no longer rely only on personal supervision. Companies need structured, repeatable assessments that present an accurate picture of daily operations. Mystery shopping fills that role effectively.

The Role of Data and Technology

Modern mystery shopping is far more sophisticated than the older practice of basic in store observation. Mobile reporting, time stamped photos, geotagging, and standardized scoring systems ensure that results are credible and comparable. Brands review dashboards that show trends across cities, branches, and service categories. Decision makers no longer wait for quarterly audits. They make adjustments within days based on real time findings.

Technology has also reduced biases. Mystery shoppers follow predefined evaluation paths that align with brand objectives. The result is feedback that is specific, measurable, and directly actionable.

Turning Insights into Action

Collecting data is only the first step. The true value of mystery shopping lies in how brands interpret and apply the findings. Leading companies use these insights to redesign training programs, optimize store layouts, and refine sales strategies. Some businesses even link performance bonuses to mystery shopping results to encourage consistent behavior.

One common improvement area is communication. Employees often need clearer guidance on how to approach customers, explain offers, or respond to complaints. Mystery shopping highlights these gaps in real scenarios. Brands then restructure scripts, role play exercises, or incentive structures to correct them.

Another major area is compliance. Whether it involves safety procedures in restaurants or documentation requirements in banks, mystery shopping helps ensure that policies are followed. This protects both the customer and the brand.

How ACE Research Supports This Transformation

ACE Research has been a key partner for many Pakistani brands seeking to improve their service quality. The company combines experienced field teams with structured methodologies to deliver reliable evaluations. Its mystery shopping programs go beyond scoring forms and provide narrative insights that help clients understand the context behind each observation.

The organization tailors its mystery shopping designs to match the service flows of each sector. Whether the objective is to test product knowledge, response times, hygiene standards, sales behavior, or customer handling, ACE Research builds evaluations that reflect actual customer journeys. Brands benefit not only from accurate data but from practical recommendations that support long term improvement.

Future Outlook

Mystery shopping in Pakistan is likely to continue its upward trajectory. The rise of online shopping, hybrid service models, and integrated sales channels will push companies to evaluate both physical and digital touchpoints. Mystery shoppers may increasingly be asked to assess app usability, delivery performance, and chat support effectiveness alongside traditional in store visits.

Customer loyalty is becoming harder to earn. Brands that commit to regular mystery shopping will be better positioned to maintain service quality and adapt quickly to changing expectations.

Conclusion

Mystery shopping has become an essential tool for Pakistani businesses seeking to strengthen customer experience and protect their reputation. As the market grows more competitive and consumers grow more discerning, companies that rely on clear, unbiased insights will outperform those that rely on assumptions. The rise of mystery shopping reflects a broader shift toward evidence based decision making. With skilled partners like ACE Research supporting this evolution, brands can move from reactive problem solving to a proactive culture of continuous improvement.

 

Inflation

Your Business Must Sustain Inflation, But How?

May 23, 2022

Businesses lacking a way forward for economic downturns are the most affected in times of crisis. Adequate analysis of the business environment, based on authentic data, validates your plan of action and steers your business in achieving its objectives.

Inflation and Risk Reduction

Inflation occurs when an economy grows due to increased spending without an accompanying increase in the production of goods and services. When this happens, prices rise and the currency within the economy is worth less than it was before. The currency essentially won’t buy as much as it would before. Inflation is a decline in the purchasing power of money over time.

Impact of Inflation on Startups

Lacking proper mentorship, a practical approach toward conducting business, and foremost important, experience makes, the life of startups short-lived. An overwhelming initiative become the victim of internal and external failures. Such failures, if managed and planned can be overcome very easily but lack of business insight, hesitation and unawareness to conduct pre-requisite research and analysis make things difficult with time.

Companies tend to deal with inflation by raising prices, accepting smaller margins, or reducing product costs (and often quality). Managers can upset their customers by raising prices, upset their investors by cutting margins, or upset practically everyone by cutting corners in order to cut costs. If customers are more price-sensitive than quantity sensitive, they are less liable to notice a price increase in the form of a smaller quantity at a constant price. It’s likely that consumers’ willingness to spend on discretionary items will diminish while costs remain high.

When inflation rises, the purchasing power of consumers erodes – in simple terms, they can now buy fewer goods and services than they used to. This means businesses will record lower sales, reducing the total revenue of the business. The pandemic has hit sectors differently, and the general inflation data and trends may not apply to all industries. For instance, sectors still recovering from the pandemic impact, like airlines and hotels, have not seen price levels fully recover to their previous levels. For businesses, it is important to reevaluate the current industry positions and the existing business dynamics within the sector. Some sectors were severely impacted, and now industry players are left with fewer competitors, while others face supply chain disruptions and need to source new suppliers. But here the question arises, who will be redefining business priorities? How to gauge changing customer perspectives and above all what actions need to be taken for improving growth and returns. Well, although these questions require the length of deliberation and analysis; both micro and macro but for this to happen, authentic information required to make decision making is very crucial. Here comes the role of market research agency and we here at Ace Research strive to provide the best possible solution to your business needs. Our panel of expert business analysts has worked with a handful of organizations for retracting the loss-making units and redefining business goals for optimum results.

Ways to contain inflationary pressure with proactive strategies

The most fundamental way of protecting against inflationary risk is to build an inflation premium into the interest rate or required rate of return (RoR), which is demanded by an investment. More serious inflationary risk occurs when the actual rate of inflation turns out differently from what is anticipated. Rising inflation means that the interest payments have progressively less purchasing power, and the principal, when it is repaid after several years, will buy substantially less than it did when the investor first purchased the bond.

To mitigate the impact of uncertainty, contingencies play a very vital role. Ace Research not only assess the market needs but also, analyses from various perspectives the risks associate with doing any type of business. We work on different strategies to keep our clients informed about various types of risk associated with your business and also, way to minimize and eradicate its negative impact on your operations and returns; both in the short and long term.

Our Role

Ace Research System is a market research firm that helps startups and businesses, capitalize on understanding the importance of data collection, and the interpretation and analysis of that data. Research is an essential component as it helps us find out which action works best, it also plays an important role in discovering alternate roles and solutions for the inflation in the market and making sure that the already existing solutions are utilized to their best capacity. Conducting research develops a better understanding and enhances decision-making capabilities in the firms. Research helps you understand what you are up against and then, it builds a foundation for your company to help you make better decisions.

We offer numerous models of analysis, based on business requirements such as;  pre/post product evaluation surveys, activation evaluation, and pre-launching surveys to check that the product being launched in the market does have any opportunity to survive in the market and if it is being demanded by the customers or not. With the help of this, you will make an informed decision along with a calculated risk. It helps you in understanding that your product has enough potential that if, one day you raise your prices a little and increase your profit margins, you will still be able to survive in that condition. But if you are unaware of the potential your product holds, or the features you can add to make your product better, then you are taking the risk of losing your potential customers. Ace Research help brands identify their substitute products and competitors so that you have ample of information next time they plan a move.

FGD

Conducting Online Focus Group Discussions in Pakistan

April 20, 2020

An In-depth interview (IDI) is a qualitative research technique that involves conducting individual interviews with respondents to explore their perspectives on a particular idea, program, or situation. For example, we might ask participants, staff, and others associated with a program or certain situation about their experiences and expectations related to that particular event. Their views about program operations, processes, outcomes, and about any changes they perceive in themselves as a result of their involvement in that particular event or program.
There are numerous areas where one can undertake IDIs for example, for consumer’s feedback and opinion on product or advertisement. In Pakistan, particularly in metropolitan cities such as Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad customers are very conscious about the type of product they are using and therefore their valuable feedback can help companies to devise strategies accordingly.

Designing Questionnaire

The research is always based on some objectives and these objectives ought to be in line with problem statements developed after assessing underlying gaps in activities performed by any organization. Research Objective will determine the structure and pattern of the Questionnaire. Therefore, the first and foremost important factor prior to conducting any research activity is an assessment of problems followed by preparation of research instrument i.e. Questionnaire. This instrument plays a very vital role in probing factors lurking behind problems identified.
The Questionnaires will help in assessing to what extent respondents are aware of the event under probe and if questionnaires are not designed with an ultimate purpose in mind, the whole purpose of conducting this activity is lost.
Questionnaire preparation must be carried out with a keen eye for events and arguments associated with the problem. Also, previous instruments used for similar researches can be consulted and with little or no modification if it serves the purpose can be utilized

Designing Manual and Guide for Interview

An interview protocol is very crucial, the rules that guide the implementation of the interviews. These are the instructions that are followed for each interview, to ensure consistency between interviews, and thus increase the reliability of the findings. Clear instructions for the interviewer should be included in the manual for conducting IDIs. The manual address following concerns i.e. What to say to interviewees when setting up the interview; What to say to interviewees when beginning the interview, including ensuring informed consent and confidentiality of the interviewee; What to say to interviewees in concluding the interview; What to do during the interview likes, Taking notes or using Recorder or Both?
The Interview guide is a checklist that carries questions or issues to be explored during the interview. There should be no more than 15 main questions to guide the interview, and probes should be included where helpful.

It is also important to note that you will likely need interview guides for each group of stakeholders, as questions may differ. Where necessary, translate guides into local languages and test the translation.
Arranging Target Audience Identify stakeholders who will be involved i.e. what information is needed and from whom. List the stakeholders to be interviewed. Identify stakeholder groups that are associated with the objectives of your IDIs. Suppose you are conducting IDI’s for the IT sector, and you want to identify what possible strategy could be adopted to address gaps in meeting revenue targets. For this you will be interviewing stakeholders such as associations working for the IT sector, government institutes involved in regulating IT sector activities, CEOs of IT companies etc. Data acquired from all the stakeholders in turn will help in analyzing the issue from a wide angle.

Similarly, if you are seeking an assessment from the target audience which is the general population again IDIs can play a very vital role. For Example, the baby products by P&G and Unilever are widely used for kids and thereby, mothers can be interviewed exclusively for gathering their opinion and experience about product’s utility. Customer perception is key in analyzing the effectiveness of any product the moment it lands on their shopping cart.
IDIs are normally directed toward those from whom very relevant and up-to-date information can be sought and also they are involved with significant stakes in activity under investigation. Therefore, referral or snowball sampling is the best method to approach stakeholders for IDIs.

Conducting In-depth Interviews:

Step 1: Making Venue arrangements (Online i.e. Zoom, Teamviewer, Skype)
If the IDI is taking place offline, it is important to note that the venue must be arranged somewhere convenient and accessible to respondent, normally the interviews are conducted in the respective office of Respondent. Prior to finalizing your venue you can drop an email to the respondents about the desired venue location and after getting their consent Interview can be arranged.
Similarly, Online IDI is easy and accessible for the respondent to attend. All that is required is good internet connectivity. The Interview can be arranged on a variety of online platforms such as the Zoom Meeting Room, Team Viewer, Skype etc. Also, for IDIs other options like WhatsApp video, iPhone’s facetime, and Facebook video chat can be utilized as well.

Step 2: Inviting Respondents
Respondents consent to take an interview will be followed by an invitation for an interview. Offline session invitation shall include, venue location, description of IDi, moderator, etc.
Online Invitation will also be sent via email, it will contain a link to any of the desirable online platforms along with a description of IDI.

Step 3: Recording Arrangements online
In face to face Interview,recorder can be set with the permission of the respondent while in online session, recording can be turned again after consent from Respondent.

Step 4: Actual Discussion more points
Once the interviewee is at the venue or has joined an online session, the IDI is good to begin. Moderator will introduce himself and the agenda of discussion, after this manual/interview guide will be followed to conduct the session. Each question has a set of probing points and in case the respondent does not comprehend the scenario a hint can be given which are marked as probing points with a moderator. Also, it is crucial for the interviewer to pay attention to what the respondent is telling and follow-up questions should be asked if clarity is required for any of his/her responses. If in case the respondent feels offended due to any question don’t stress on it and instead move on to the next question.

Step 5: Concluding Interview Session
After the interview ends a letter of appreciation can be furnished to the respondent for sparing his/her precious time for this session.

Reporting

Step 1: Keeping summary notes during the discussion
It is important to take notes of key points during the discussion. For this Assistant moderator can be tasked to carry out this activity of taking notes.

Step 2: Writing Transcripts
Transcripts of IDIs are very crucial and important for extracting relevant information. All the discussions have to be written down either during the session or later (if recordings are taken) for Reporting and Analysis.

Step 3: Make Summary of each discussion
Summary of all relevant and important responses i.e. Question wise has to be extracted from transcripts and a comprehensive report will be created for highlighting key areas which may include improvement areas, core problem areas, opportunities, threats, strength and weaknesses.

Step 4: Topline Report
Based on the summary topline report will be prepared, it contains all the important points identified by respondents which are directly related to Objectives of IDIs. It is preferred that topline report should be a grid with questions on one axis and precise response by respondents on other providing a very clear glimpse of the overall discussion.

Step 5: Analysis
Based on the overall discussion and topline report analysis is drawn to conclude the outcomes of the discussion in line with the Objectives of carrying out this discussion. The Analysis is shared with the Client and thereupon necessary action plans can be prepared to address the problem.