In this age of competition, business owners try out every fair means to attain the best brand names. They leave no stone unturned and pay millions of dollars to employ the best methods available to know about their brand competence and thereby work on making them even better. All these wouldn’t have been possible without the modern day market research techniques. They have branched out into several beneficial trend analysis methods that have helped companies a great deal in discovering how their brands are perceived by the consumers. Paid online surveys, focus groups and mystery shopping are some of the most popular market research techniques employed by big companies.
As far as online jobs are concerned, though they are good sources of additional income, there are several scams associated with them. Mystery shopping jobs, however, have been reported to be free of scams and also provide companies with a live and accurate evaluation of product conditions and employee performance. Hence many companies employ mystery shopping methods for accurate brand assessment. Companies hire individuals and provide them with thorough training regarding the mystery shopping procedure. Further, they give detailed instructions to the shoppers before the commencement of each secret shopping assignment. Throughout the assignment, secret shoppers need to carefully observe the store atmosphere, store maintenance, product preservation, employee conduct, etc. and later create a detailed report on the entire shopping experience. Some companies allow secret shoppers to carry audio or video devices and secretly record the happenings of the store. The reports prepared need to be precise, error free and easily understandable.
For brand owners, it’s not just product freshness that they need to evaluate; they need to take equal care in maintaining the stores and upgrade the staff’s performances – only then can a brand be overall judged and considered to be good brands by the consumers. Accordingly they need to provide adequate and up-to-date training to the hired mystery shoppers so that they can find out the underlying or unattended issues. Following are a few factors that need to be considered for better business competence:
Analysis of employee conduct
An employee’s conduct matters the most in creating a feel good factor about the brand in the minds of the consumers. Mystery shopping not only helps find out the flaws in their conduct but also helps recognize some outstanding performances. Therefore, it’s not only about finding the drawbacks but also about getting to know the good performers and rewarding them for their valuable contribution. This also motivates other employees to improve their performance.
Analysis of the competitor’s performance
One of the biggest advantages of mystery shopping is that a company can send a mystery shopper to a competitor’s store to gather ideas on the latter’s implemented strategies. This does not imply that a company would copy the same strategies, rather, it can find out strategies that would be more effective than that of its competitor’s.
Analysis of consumer’s expectations
Most consumers do not speak of their opinion whether they are satisfied or dissatisfied. If they tend to be dissatisfied, they are likely to stop using a particular product and switch over to a different one that appears to be more promising. Companies need to keep an eye on such typical consumer behaviours through effective secret shopping methods. During their assignments, secret shoppers can interact with the customers while themselves posing as regular customers and find out what they opine about the products, the store ambience or the conduct of the staff. This way they can provide the companies a clear picture of what exactly consumers have to say or expect from the brand.
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