Facts About Secret Shopping Jobs – Market Research, Customer Service and Product Evaluations
Posted by | Posted in Fashion Latest! | Posted on 26-02-2009
photo credit: Tammy Manet
Many people have the perception that secret shoppers merely run around and shop for things we would normally see and buy anyway. This couldn’t be more wrong! Mystery shopping is so much more multifaceted than shopping but is a critical aspect to the booming market research industry.
Mystery shopping in recent years has become an integral part of thousands of market research companies. As it turns out, it’s is one of the best tools to determine how a business communicates and comes off toward their customers. Product purchasing, advertising schemas and employee interaction are all areas of market research that can be investigated through the hands, eyes and minds of a secret shopper. For market research companies, shoppers have much more responsibility than simply posing as a regular customer to see how they will be treated by employees. Today undercover workers are exposing integral parts of how a business interacts through the use of special training and mystery shopping techniques.
Market research companies are using stealth shoppers to identify an enormous range of customer services and business interactions. Even within businesses themselves, researchers are hired to evaluate critical aspects of how that company runs and is viewed by the average consumer. Some are hired to test employee integrity in special situations where there might be a question as to where an employee’s loyalty might lie. In fact, this situation is exactly how the mystery shopping industry became to be. In the early 1900s people were hired as fake employees at banks to determine whether or not other employees were plotting to, or stealing from the business. Then, the industry was more on par with what private detectives might do and while today this practice is far less common, secret shoppers are helping businesses to explore areas where the company can improve, and are doing so across hundreds of industries worldwide.
While hiring to test employee integrity is a practice falling out of favor, what is important to realize is how important this kind of test shopping is to businesses and market research companies. The information shoppers return via questionnaires, reports and evaluations to the companies they work for is a resource these businesses take very seriously and use scrupulously to make changes within the inner workings of their business. While some workers attend retail stores to asses employee greetings, others are asked to go in search of a service that isn’t likely for their certain demographic. For example a young female may be asked to go ’shopping’ for a car to see if she is quoted a different price than a male car buyer. This type of work is called discrimination-shopping and is used to make sure customers in an industry are treated fairly and equally across all demographics. As you can see, this would be very valuable information for a company to discover and might save them millions in lawsuits, lost revenues or other financial problems as a result. Also, mystery shoppers are used to see how certain products come across within different advertising environments. The assessment provided might change the way an entire company goes about advertising and promoting that particular product to consumers.
As such, workers are asked to do everything under the sun, including going to a hospital for a consultation, returning products without price tags, rating their overall experience at an event, trying to purchase tickets for a vacation, signing up for a gym memberships and infinitely more! Many mystery shopping jobs have translated into work into higher sectors of the market research industry and have been used as a huge stepping-stone towards a career as a market research professional.
As you can see, these jobs involve much more than writing simple product evaluations. The work is diverse, depending on the needs of the contractor, and important in the grand scheme of a business’ long-term success.
People who are seeking work at home opportunities should consider secret shopping opportunities. Employers typically contract shoppers for specific projects, and hire few in-house employees. Get the scoop on the mystery shopping industry and a list of employers from Bill Edwards, a writer for MysteryShopperJobFinder. Read his material and learn how to spot mystery shopping scams, understand the process, and why companies conduct market research studies.
