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Mystery shopping (related terms: mystery shopper, mystery consumer, mystery research,secret shopperand secret shopping and auditor) is a method used by marketing research companies and organizations that wish to measure quality of sales and service, job performance, regulatory compliance, or to gather specific information about a market or competitors, including products and services.
Mystery shoppers typically mirror common consumer behaviors to test the consistency of the habits deemed important to a specific brand or industry. Mystery shoppers, who primarily operate as independent contractors or gig workers, submit detailed reports and feedback about their experiences.
Mystery shopping can take the form of physical visits to business premises, or calling companies to evaluate their customer experience often called mystery calling or Customer Experience Research Calling (CXR Calling).
Mystery shopping assessments and reports range from simple questionnaires to audio and video recordings. This type of market research can be used in any industry, from B2C and B2B, although B2B is rare. Mystery shoppers interact with and report on a wide range of businesses and services, including gas stations, automotive dealerships, transportation services, real estate and property management firms, movie theaters, health and fitness clubs, insurance products, roadside assistance, health care products and providers for both humans and pets, assisted living facilities, and funeral homes. However, the most common industries that utilize this research method are retail, hospitality and travel, restaurants and fast-food chains, banking, and e-commerce. [1]
The mystery shopping industry had an estimated value of nearly $600 million in the United States 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 average growth of 12.2 percent. The report estimates that 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. The Independent Mystery Shoppers' Coalition reports there are 1.5 million mystery shoppers in the United States alone. Similar surveys are available for European 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." [2] In the United Kingdom, a Mystery Shoppers Practitioners' Group has been established under the auspices of the Market Research Society. [3]
Additionally, 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. [4]
A 2011 survey by American Express found a clear correlation between a company's attention to customer service and customers' willingness to pay more for good service. [5]
CBC Television's news magazine program Marketplace ran a segment on this topic during a January 2001 episode. [6]
Mystery shopping organizations advise that their research should only be used for employee incentive programs and that punishment or firing is an inappropriate use of mystery-shopper data. However, stories of employees being fired as a direct result of negative mystery shopper feedback are not uncommon. [7]
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. Other organizations that have defined standards for Mystery Shopping are ESOMAR, MRS and MRA. The most widely used set of professional guidelines and ethics standards for the Market Research industry is ISO.
In the state of Nevada, mystery shoppers must be licensed by the PILB board and work under a company that has a private investigators license in order to perform mystery shopping jobs. Unlicensed mystery shoppers may face fines. [8]
In June 2008, the American Medical Association'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." [9] However, in 2009, the council decided to withdraw the report "in light of further testimony heard at the 2008 Interim Meeting [of the AMA House of Delegates]". [10]
When used in published research, mystery shopping is known as a simulated patient research methodology. The Checklist for reporting research using simulated patient methodology (CRiSP) should be used when reporting these research. [11]
The UK government's Crown Commercial Service operated a mystery shopper scheme from February 2011 to November 2018, whose remit was to provide a route for suppliers to raise concerns about public procurement practice in England. [12] The service was re-branded as the "Public Procurement Review Service" in November 2018 responding to feedback from suppliers and public bodies that the "mystery shopper" title did not properly reflect the role of the service. [13] Section 40 of the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 created a statutory basis for some aspects of the review service. [14]
Trading Standards conducts underage sales testing (mystery shopping tests) on businesses, using child volunteers, to find out which traders are selling age-restricted goods to children. [15] The tests, which are carried out using strict national guidelines, are undertaken to ensure traders are complying with the law. If a trader sells to the child volunteer, an investigation will take place which may involve legal action being taken. [16]
Also in the UK, mystery shopping is increasingly used by local authorities, and other non-profit organizations such as housing associations and churches, to provide feedback on user satisfaction. [17]
Customer relationship management (CRM) is a process in which a business or other organization administers its interactions with customers, typically using data analysis to study large amounts of information.
Marketing is the act of satisfying and retaining customers. It is one of the primary components of business management and commerce.
Sales are activities related to selling or the number of goods sold in a given targeted time period. The delivery of a service for a cost is also considered a sale. A period during which goods are sold for a reduced price may also be referred to as a "sale".
Marketing research is the systematic gathering, recording, and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data about issues relating to marketing products and services. The goal is to identify and assess how changing elements of the marketing mix impacts customer behavior.
In sales, commerce, and economics, a customer is the recipient of a good, service, product, or an idea, obtained from a seller, vendor, or supplier via a financial transaction or an exchange for money or some other valuable consideration.
Market research is an organized effort to gather information about target markets and customers: know about them, starting with who they are. It is an important component of business strategy and a major factor in maintaining competitiveness. Market research helps to identify and analyze the needs of the market, the market size and the competition. Its techniques encompass both qualitative techniques such as focus groups, in-depth interviews, and ethnography, as well as quantitative techniques such as customer surveys, and analysis of secondary data.
Customer service is the assistance and advice provided by a company through phone, online chat, and e-mail to those who buy or use its products or services. Each industry requires different levels of customer service, but towards the end, the idea of a well-performed service is that of increasing revenues. The perception of success of the customer service interactions is dependent on employees "who can adjust themselves to the personality of the customer". Customer service is often practiced in a way that reflects the strategies and values of a firm. Good quality customer service is usually measured through customer retention.
The loyalty business model is a business model used in strategic management in which company resources are employed so as to increase the loyalty of customers and other stakeholders in the expectation that corporate objectives will be met or surpassed. A typical example of this type of model is: quality of product or service leads to customer satisfaction, which leads to customer loyalty, which leads to profitability.
In marketing, lead generation is the process of creating consumer interest or inquiry into the products or services of a business. A lead is the contact information and, in some cases, demographic information of a customer who is interested in a specific product or service.
Marketing intelligence (MI) is the everyday information relevant to a company's markets, gathered and analyzed specifically for the purpose of accurate and confident decision-making in determining market opportunity, market penetration strategy, and market development metrics. Marketing intelligence is necessary when entering a foreign market.
Customer satisfaction is a term frequently used in marketing to evaluate customer experience. It is a measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation. Customer satisfaction is defined as "the number of customers, or percentage of total customers, whose reported experience with a firm, its products, or its services (ratings) exceeds specified satisfaction goals." Enhancing customer satisfaction and fostering customer loyalty are pivotal for businesses, given the significant importance of improving the balance between customer attitudes before and after the consumption process.
Enterprise feedback management (EFM) is a system of processes and software that enables organizations to centrally manage deployment of surveys while dispersing authoring and analysis throughout an organization. EFM systems typically provide different roles and permission levels for different types of users, such as novice survey authors, professional survey authors, survey reporters and translators. EFM can help an organization establish a dialogue with employees, partners, and customers regarding key issues and concerns and potentially make customer-specific real time interventions. EFM consists of data collection, analysis and reporting.
The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) is an economic indicator that measures the satisfaction of consumers across the U.S. economy. It is produced by the American Customer Satisfaction Index based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Industrial marketing or business-to-business marketing is the marketing of goods and services by one business to another. Industrial goods are those an industry uses to produce an end product from one or more raw material. The term, industrial marketing has largely been replaced by the term B2B marketing.
A vendor management system (VMS) is an Internet-enabled, often Web-based application that acts as a mechanism for business to manage and procure staffing services – temporary, and, in some cases, permanent placement services – as well as outside contract or contingent labor. Typical features of a VMS application include order distribution, consolidated billing and significant enhancements in reporting capability that outperforms manual systems and processes.
Aberdeen is an international marketing intelligence company. Aberdeen's headquarters is based in Waltham, Massachusetts, United States, with an additional US office location in Wilton, CT, as well as three European offices in Versailles (France), Madrid (Spain), and Chertsey.
Service quality (SQ), in its contemporary conceptualisation, is a comparison of perceived expectations (E) of a service with perceived performance (P), giving rise to the equation SQ = P − E. This conceptualistion of service quality has its origins in the expectancy-disconfirmation paradigm.
JETT customer experience is a customer experience consultancy providing research, consulting and training to service businesses in China and Hong Kong. Established in Shanghai, JETT is a Wholly Foreign Owned Enterprise (WFOE) registered in China and is a subsidiary of JETT Asia Ltd. registered in Hong Kong. JETT’s products include customer experience consulting, mystery shopping, customer service training, teambuilding and customer engagement research.
Customer data management (CDM) is the ways in which businesses keep track of their customer information and survey their customer base in order to obtain feedback. CDM includes a range of software or cloud computing applications designed to give large organizations rapid and efficient access to customer data. Surveys and data can be centrally located and widely accessible within a company, as opposed to being warehoused in separate departments. CDM encompasses the collection, analysis, organizing, reporting and sharing of customer information throughout an organization. Businesses need a thorough understanding of their customers’ needs if they are to retain and increase their customer base. Efficient CDM solutions provide companies with the ability to deal instantly with customer issues and obtain immediate feedback. As a result, customer retention and customer satisfaction can show marked improvement. According to a study by Aberdeen Group, "above-average and best-in-class companies... attain greater than 20% annual improvement in retention rates, revenues, data accuracy and partner/customer satisfaction rates."
Allegiance, Inc is a voice of customer (VoC) and enterprise feedback management (EFM) technology platform that let organizations collect and analyze consumer data in real time. The company was recognized for providing large companies and government agencies with a range of big data mining tools, and it was listed as one of the GSA’s approved vendors. Allegiance’s clients include VMware, Citi, AeroMexico, Nalco, Ameriprise, Adobe and Dell, and it was ranked as one of Inc. magazine’s fastest-growing companies.