The Pakistan Advertisers Society announces development of Living Standards Measure in Pakistan

The Pakistan Advertisers’ Society has exclusively endorsed Aftab Associates – a Pakistan based Research Company to develop and launch Living Standards Measure (LSM) in Pakistan in an effort to shift the industry from the current Socio-Economic Classification.

The entire project will be overseen by the PAS Research Committee with the help of an international research expert Trevor Sharot, CEO Red Research who will be providing technical oversight to the PAS Research Committee on the development, launch and on-going monitoring of the new currency.

In April 2015, PAS Research Committee issued a request for proposals (RFP) to provide detailed input into the development, design and launch of LSM. After careful reviews and presentations by selected companies submitting proposals, Aftab Associates was finally endorsed by the committee for the project.

Trevor Sharot, CEO, Red Research, said, "The standard of all the proposals was high and all the tenderers deserve our thanks for the obvious hard work that went into their offers.  Now we move to the second stage and I look forward to working with Aftab Associates and the PAS Research Committee in setting up LSM."

The Chairman of PAS, Khurram Koraishy, Head of Marketing, Tapal Tea, lauded the diligent work of the Research Committee and extended grateful thanks to all the local and international research companies that bid on the project.

Abrar Hasan, Chairman of the PAS Research Committee and CEO of National Foods, thanked his Committee colleagues for their tremendous support and commended Aftab Associate’s expertise and understanding of the industry and proposing a superior solution that addressed the need of the industry.

Quratulain Ibrahim, CEO of Aftab Associates, said, “After working on the first SEC for PAS, Aftab Associates is once again thrilled to be working with the Society on developing a much needed LSM currency in collaboration with proven global research and systems expert affiliates.” She believes that the new LSM classification, with its geographic coverage of urban and rural market, will be more discriminatory with a mix of behavioral and spending power segmentation giving marketers, advertisers and researchers much deeper insights on their consumers”.

Qamar Abbas, PAS Executive Director said, “The launch of LSM to ESOMAR’s Global Standards will meet our member’s needs for much better segmentation of the wider population of Pakistan”. He reaffirmed PAS’ overall confidence with Aftab Associates for proposing a technically superior research methodology that will change the way marketers segment and understand their consumers. He also commended the efforts of Red Research for the way it has guided the Research Committee, and confirmed that Red Research will now be working closely with Aftab Associates and providing continuing guidance to PAS and the Research Committee during the set-up phase.

It is anticipated that the new LSM currency will be formally launched in the third quarter of 2016 after a suitable demonstration period for all industry users.