Mystery shopping
Encyclopedia
Mystery shopping or a mystery consumer is a tool used externally by market research
companies or watchdog organizations or internally by companies themselves to measure quality of service or compliance to regulation, or to gather specific information about products and services. The mystery consumer's specific identity is generally not known by the establishment being evaluated.
Mystery shoppers perform specific tasks such as purchasing a product, asking questions, registering complaints or behaving in a certain way, and then provide detailed reports or feedback about their experiences.
Mystery shopping was standard practice by the early 1940s as a way to measure employee integrity. Tools used for mystery shopping assessments range from simple questionnaire
s to complete audio
and video
recordings. Mystery shopping can be used in any industry, with the most common venues being retail stores
, hotels, movie theater
s, restaurants, fast food
chains, banks, gas stations, car dealership
s, apartments, health clubs and health care facilities. Since 2010, mystery shopping has become abundant in the medical tourism industry, with healthcare providers and medical facilities using the tool to assess and improve the customer service experience. In the UK
mystery shopping is increasingly used to provide feedback on customer services provided by local authorities, and other non-profit organization
s such as housing association
s and churches.
hires a company providing mystery shopping services, a survey
model will be drawn up and agreed to which defines what information and improvement factors the client company wishes to measure. These are then drawn up into survey instruments and assignments that are allocated to shoppers registered with the mystery shopping company.
The details and information points shoppers take note of typically include:
Shoppers are often given instructions or procedures to make the transaction
atypical to make the test of the knowledge and service skills of the employees more stringent or specific to a particular service issue (known as scenarios
). For instance, mystery shoppers at a restaurant may pretend they are lactose-intolerant
, or a clothing store mystery shopper could inquire about gift-wrapping services. Not all mystery shopping scenarios include a purchase.
While gathering information, shoppers usually blend in to the store being evaluated as regular shoppers. They may sometimes be required to take photographs or measurements, return purchases, or count the number of products, seats, people during the visit. A timer or a stopwatch may be required. In some states in the USA, mystery shoppers must also be licensed as private investigators in order to perform some of the tasks.
After the visit the shopper submits the data collected to the mystery shopping company, which reviews and analyzes the information, completing quantitative or qualitative statistical analysis reports on the data for the client company. This allows for a comparison on how the stores or restaurants are doing against previously defined criteria.
in 2004, according to a 2005 report commissioned by the Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA). Companies that participated in the report experienced an average growth of 11.1 percent from 2003 to 2004, compared to an average growth of 12.2 percent. The report estimates more than 8.1 million mystery shops were conducted in 2004. The report represents the first industry association attempt to quantify the size of the mystery shopping industry. Similar surveys are available for Europe
an regions where mystery shopping is becoming more embedded into company procedures.
As a measure of its importance, customer/patient satisfaction is being incorporated more frequently into executive pay. A study by a U.S. firm found more than 55% of hospital chief executive officers surveyed in 2005 had "some compensation at risk," based on patient satisfaction, up from only 8% to 20% a dozen years ago."
CBC Television
's news magazine program Marketplace
ran a segment on this topic during a January 2001 episode.
MSPA has also defined Standards for Mystery Shopping. The Standard is available in a full version and an Abstract version. The Abstract is available in 32 languages.
Other organizations that have defined standards for Mystery Shopping are: ESOMAR, MRS and MRA.
's Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs released a recommendation on the use of "secret shopper patients". The Recommendation: "Physicians have an ethical responsibility to engage in activities that contribute to continual improvements in patient care. One method for promoting such quality improvement is through the use of secret shopper 'patients' who have been appropriately trained to provide feedback about physician performance in the clinical setting."
The most widely used set of professional guidelines and ethics standards for the Market Research industry is ISO 20252 ratified in 2006.
(a form of advance fee fraud
) perpetrated on people in several countries who wish to be mystery shoppers. A person is sent a money order
, often from Western Union, or cheque for a larger sum than a mystery purchase they are required to make, with a request to deposit it into their bank account
, use a portion for a mystery purchase and their fee, and wire the remainder through a wire transfer
company such as Western Union
or MoneyGram; the money is to be wired immediately as response time is being evaluated. The cheque is fraudulent, and is returned unpaid by the victim's bank, after the money has been wired. One scam involved fraudulent website
s using a misspelled URL
to advertise online and in newspapers under a legitimate company's name. It should be remembered that this is not the only type of mystery shopping scam taking place which involves money being paid, as it has been widely reported in the UK that shoppers should "Watch out for some online mystery shopping scams which will cost you money for either training or for signing up without the promise of any work."
Valid mystery shopping companies do not normally send their clients a cheque prior to work being completed, and their advertisements usually include a contact person and phone number. Some fraudulent cheques can be identified by a financial professional. On February 3, 2009, The Internet Crime Complaint Center
issued a warning on this scam. A legitimate company that occasionally sends prepayment for large transactions says "We do occasionally fund upfront for very large spend purchases but we use cheques or direct bank transfers which should mean you can see when they are cleared and so can be sure you really do have the money." It is standard practice for mystery shopping providers evaluating services such as airlines to arrange for the airfare to be issued beforehand at their own expenses (usually by means of a frequent flyer reward ticket). In any case, it is unlikely that any bona-fide provider would allocate a high-value assignment to a new shopper or proactively recruit new ones for that purpose, preferring instead to work with a pool of existing pre-vetted experienced shoppers.
Market research
Market research is any organized effort to gather information about markets or customers. It is a very important component of business strategy...
companies or watchdog organizations or internally by companies themselves to measure quality of service or compliance to regulation, or to gather specific information about products and services. The mystery consumer's specific identity is generally not known by the establishment being evaluated.
Mystery shoppers perform specific tasks such as purchasing a product, asking questions, registering complaints or behaving in a certain way, and then provide detailed reports or feedback about their experiences.
Mystery shopping was standard practice by the early 1940s as a way to measure employee integrity. Tools used for mystery shopping assessments range from simple questionnaire
Questionnaire
A questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of a series of questions and other prompts for the purpose of gathering information from respondents. Although they are often designed for statistical analysis of the responses, this is not always the case...
s to complete audio
Sound
Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...
and video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
recordings. Mystery shopping can be used in any industry, with the most common venues being retail stores
Retailing
Retail consists of the sale of physical goods or merchandise from a fixed location, such as a department store, boutique or kiosk, or by mail, in small or individual lots for direct consumption by the purchaser. Retailing may include subordinated services, such as delivery. Purchasers may be...
, hotels, movie theater
Movie theater
A movie theater, cinema, movie house, picture theater, film theater is a venue, usually a building, for viewing motion pictures ....
s, restaurants, fast food
Fast food
Fast food is the term given to food that can be prepared and served very quickly. While any meal with low preparation time can be considered to be fast food, typically the term refers to food sold in a restaurant or store with preheated or precooked ingredients, and served to the customer in a...
chains, banks, gas stations, car dealership
Car dealership
A car dealership or vehicle local distribution is a business that sells new or used cars at the retail level, based on a dealership contract with an automaker or its sales subsidiary. It employs automobile salespeople to do the selling...
s, apartments, health clubs and health care facilities. Since 2010, mystery shopping has become abundant in the medical tourism industry, with healthcare providers and medical facilities using the tool to assess and improve the customer service experience. In the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
mystery shopping is increasingly used to provide feedback on customer services provided by local authorities, and other non-profit organization
Non-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...
s such as housing association
Housing association
Housing associations in the United Kingdom are independent not-for-profit bodies that provide low-cost "social housing" for people in housing need. Any trading surplus is used to maintain existing homes and to help finance new ones...
s and churches.
Methodology
When a client companyCompany
A company is a form of business organization. It is an association or collection of individual real persons and/or other companies, who each provide some form of capital. This group has a common purpose or focus and an aim of gaining profits. This collection, group or association of persons can be...
hires a company providing mystery shopping services, a survey
Statistical survey
Survey methodology is the field that studies surveys, that is, the sample of individuals from a population with a view towards making statistical inferences about the population using the sample. Polls about public opinion, such as political beliefs, are reported in the news media in democracies....
model will be drawn up and agreed to which defines what information and improvement factors the client company wishes to measure. These are then drawn up into survey instruments and assignments that are allocated to shoppers registered with the mystery shopping company.
The details and information points shoppers take note of typically include:
- number of employees in the store on entering
- how long it takes before the mystery shopper is greeted
- the name of the employees
- whether or not the greeting is friendly, ideally according to objective measures
- the questions asked by the shopper to find a suitable product
- the types of products shown
- the sales arguments used by the employee
- whether or how the employee attempted to close the sale
- whether the employee suggested any add-on sales
- whether the employee invited the shopper to come back to the store
- cleanliness of store and store associates
- speed of service
- compliance with company standards relating to service, store appearance, and grooming/presentation
Shoppers are often given instructions or procedures to make the transaction
Financial transaction
A financial transaction is an event or condition under the contract between a buyer and a seller to exchange an asset for payment. It involves a change in the status of the finances of two or more businesses or individuals.-History:...
atypical to make the test of the knowledge and service skills of the employees more stringent or specific to a particular service issue (known as scenarios
Scenario analysis
Scenario analysis is a process of analyzing possible future events by considering alternative possible outcomes . Thus, the scenario analysis, which is a main method of projections, does not try to show one exact picture of the future. Instead, it presents consciously several alternative future...
). For instance, mystery shoppers at a restaurant may pretend they are lactose-intolerant
Lactose intolerance
Lactose intolerance, also called lactase deficiency or hypolactasia, is the inability to digest and metabolize lactose, a sugar found in milk...
, or a clothing store mystery shopper could inquire about gift-wrapping services. Not all mystery shopping scenarios include a purchase.
While gathering information, shoppers usually blend in to the store being evaluated as regular shoppers. They may sometimes be required to take photographs or measurements, return purchases, or count the number of products, seats, people during the visit. A timer or a stopwatch may be required. In some states in the USA, mystery shoppers must also be licensed as private investigators in order to perform some of the tasks.
After the visit the shopper submits the data collected to the mystery shopping company, which reviews and analyzes the information, completing quantitative or qualitative statistical analysis reports on the data for the client company. This allows for a comparison on how the stores or restaurants are doing against previously defined criteria.
Statistics
The mystery shopping industry had an estimated value of nearly $600 million in the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in 2004, according to a 2005 report commissioned by the Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA). Companies that participated in the report experienced an average growth of 11.1 percent from 2003 to 2004, compared to an average growth of 12.2 percent. The report estimates more than 8.1 million mystery shops were conducted in 2004. The report represents the first industry association attempt to quantify the size of the mystery shopping industry. Similar surveys are available for Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an regions where mystery shopping is becoming more embedded into company procedures.
As a measure of its importance, customer/patient satisfaction is being incorporated more frequently into executive pay. A study by a U.S. firm found more than 55% of hospital chief executive officers surveyed in 2005 had "some compensation at risk," based on patient satisfaction, up from only 8% to 20% a dozen years ago."
CBC Television
CBC Television
CBC Television is a Canadian television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcaster.Although the CBC is supported by public funding, the television network supplements this funding with commercial advertising revenue, in contrast to CBC Radio which are...
's news magazine program Marketplace
Marketplace (TV series)
Marketplace is a Canadian television series, broadcast on CBC Television. Launched in 1972, the series is a consumer advocacy newsmagazine, which shows investigative reports on issues such as product testing, health and safety, fraudulent business practices and other news issues of interest to...
ran a segment on this topic during a January 2001 episode.
Ethics
The Trade Organization for Mystery Shopping Providers, MSPA has defined a Code of Professional Standards and Ethics Agreement for Mystery Shopping Providers and for Mystery Shoppers.MSPA has also defined Standards for Mystery Shopping. The Standard is available in a full version and an Abstract version. The Abstract is available in 32 languages.
Other organizations that have defined standards for Mystery Shopping are: ESOMAR, MRS and MRA.
USA
In June 2008 the American Medical AssociationAmerican Medical Association
The American Medical Association , founded in 1847 and incorporated in 1897, is the largest association of medical doctors and medical students in the United States.-Scope and operations:...
's Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs released a recommendation on the use of "secret shopper patients". The Recommendation: "Physicians have an ethical responsibility to engage in activities that contribute to continual improvements in patient care. One method for promoting such quality improvement is through the use of secret shopper 'patients' who have been appropriately trained to provide feedback about physician performance in the clinical setting."
The most widely used set of professional guidelines and ethics standards for the Market Research industry is ISO 20252 ratified in 2006.
Scams
There is a fraudulent confidence trickConfidence trick
A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence. A confidence artist is an individual working alone or in concert with others who exploits characteristics of the human psyche such as dishonesty and honesty, vanity, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility,...
(a form of advance fee fraud
Advance fee fraud
An advance-fee fraud is a confidence trick in which the target is persuaded to advance sums of money in the hope of realizing a significantly larger gain...
) perpetrated on people in several countries who wish to be mystery shoppers. A person is sent a money order
Money order
A money order is a payment order for a pre-specified amount of money. Because it is required that the funds be prepaid for the amount shown on it, it is a more trusted method of payment than a cheque.-History of money orders:...
, often from Western Union, or cheque for a larger sum than a mystery purchase they are required to make, with a request to deposit it into their bank account
Bank account
A Bank account is a financial account recording the financial transactions between the customer and the bank and the resulting financial position of the customer with the bank .-Account types:...
, use a portion for a mystery purchase and their fee, and wire the remainder through a wire transfer
Wire transfer
Wire transfer or credit transfer is a method of electronic funds transfer from one person or institution to another. A wire transfer can be made from one bank account to another bank account or through a transfer of cash at a cash office...
company such as Western Union
Western Union
The Western Union Company is a financial services and communications company based in the United States. Its North American headquarters is in Englewood, Colorado. Up until 2006, Western Union was the best-known U.S...
or MoneyGram; the money is to be wired immediately as response time is being evaluated. The cheque is fraudulent, and is returned unpaid by the victim's bank, after the money has been wired. One scam involved fraudulent website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
s using a misspelled URL
Uniform Resource Locator
In computing, a uniform resource locator or universal resource locator is a specific character string that constitutes a reference to an Internet resource....
to advertise online and in newspapers under a legitimate company's name. It should be remembered that this is not the only type of mystery shopping scam taking place which involves money being paid, as it has been widely reported in the UK that shoppers should "Watch out for some online mystery shopping scams which will cost you money for either training or for signing up without the promise of any work."
Valid mystery shopping companies do not normally send their clients a cheque prior to work being completed, and their advertisements usually include a contact person and phone number. Some fraudulent cheques can be identified by a financial professional. On February 3, 2009, The Internet Crime Complaint Center
Internet Crime Complaint Center
The Internet Crime Complaint Center, also known as IC3, is a multi-agency task force made up by the Federal Bureau of Investigation , the National White Collar Crime Center , and the Bureau of Justice Assistance .-Purpose:...
issued a warning on this scam. A legitimate company that occasionally sends prepayment for large transactions says "We do occasionally fund upfront for very large spend purchases but we use cheques or direct bank transfers which should mean you can see when they are cleared and so can be sure you really do have the money." It is standard practice for mystery shopping providers evaluating services such as airlines to arrange for the airfare to be issued beforehand at their own expenses (usually by means of a frequent flyer reward ticket). In any case, it is unlikely that any bona-fide provider would allocate a high-value assignment to a new shopper or proactively recruit new ones for that purpose, preferring instead to work with a pool of existing pre-vetted experienced shoppers.
See also
- European Society for Opinion and Marketing ResearchEuropean Society for Opinion and Marketing ResearchThe European Society for Opinion and Market Research is a world association for market, social and opinion researchers.Founded in 1948, ESOMAR began as a regional association within Europe...
- Marketing researchMarketing researchMarketing research is "the function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information — information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve...
- Observational techniquesObservational techniquesIn marketing and the social sciences, observational research is a social research technique that involves the direct observation of phenomena in their natural setting...
- Participant observationParticipant observationParticipant observation is a type of research strategy. It is a widely used methodology in many disciplines, particularly, cultural anthropology, but also sociology, communication studies, and social psychology...