Overview of Mystery Shopping

The concept of Mystery Shopping is believed to have originated in the 1940s to enable companies to assess employee behaviour and standard of customer service.

Mystery shopping is a marketing research tool and is known by a variety of different names including, mystery auditors, spotters, mystery customers, secret shoppers, employee evaluators or performance auditors.

Mystery shoppers are employed by organisations to act as real customers in order to gain a customer insight into how the business is performing.

The results provide a greater understanding of how their company is performing in terms of the level of service being provided and also enables the company to utilize the information gathered to improve the business processes.

Mystery shopping tends to occur in retail shops, restaurants, banking, car dealerships, fast food chains or basically any situation where there is a customer - company interaction.

When mystery shopping first materialised the only tool used for assessing businesses was the filling out of questionnaires by the mystery shopper.

However, over the years as new technologies have become apparent then so have new tools for assessment. For example, audio and video recordings but more often than not in the 21st century the Internet is used as a tool to carry out mystery shopping online.

This could involve a mystery shopper assessing a company's website, carrying out surveys or even just emailing the company with an enquiry.

Therefore, the mystery shopping industry is growing rapidly with the internet and also with the traditional method.

This rapid growth is also further emphasised in the Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA) 2005 report. It stipulates that in 2004 over 8.1 million mystery visits were conducted and that the mystery shopping industry is worth nearly $600 million in the United States alone.

Altogether, the mystery shopping industry does have its advantages if you were considering it as a job. For example, if you were carrying out a mystery visit on a hotel or a restaurant then you would receive these non returnable services for free.

However, you must also consider the disadvantages. For instance, you may be required to travel to get to your location and you may not be given travelling expenses.

Overall the mystery shopping concept can provide an additional income but it is not an easy earner because you have to acquire key skills such as:

• Expressing your views and opinions in writing,
• Demonstrate excellent role play or acting skills
• Demonstrate excellent written and spoken English
• Possess an excellent memory

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