Mystery Shopping and its Various Advantages to the Companies and the Society

Those who love to spend hours together in stores and shopping malls trying out the latest products can earn part-time income doing mystery shopping. Mystery shopping or secret shopping involves going from store to store and analysing the store conditions, the products and the customer service, and getting paid for it.

Qualifying as a mystery shopper is no big deal. Any literate individual willing to dedicate few hours a day regularly for additional income can try out this paid job. Like paid surveys, mystery shopping too has become popular with millions of part-time income seekers and this industry is growing everyday. This has made it an easy target of the scam artists. The scam mystery shopping sites generally charge money from people to include them in their list of mystery shoppers. However, the fact is that people can sign up with genuine mystery shopping companies for free. Therefore, it is advisable to carry out a bit of research on this field. Online blogs and forums can be joined to gather accurate information on the different aspects of mystery shopping jobs.

Many genuine sites charge a nominal membership free to provide access to their database of legitimate mystery shopping job providers. Since the membership is for a lifetime, one can sign up with these online sites. The amount so spent can be easily recovered from one to two mystery shopping assignments. During registration, an individual is required to provide exact details as asked by the company. The registration procedure generally involves filling an online form with basic details and valid contact address. After the registration is complete, the company allows the newly registered member to access its list of companies looking for mystery shoppers. From this list, an individual can choose his desired mystery shopping company and sign up with it for free.

Individuals need to give valid contact details while signing up with a mystery shopping company. Once hired, the individuals are provided with adequate training and instructions as per the requirements of the client company. The assignments are then sent to the respective e-mail ids of the mystery shoppers along with strict sets of instructions. The assignments need to be carried out as per the given instructions. After a mystery shopping assignment is completed, a mystery shopper is required to fill out a survey providing his unbiased feedback on the products and the customer service. This online feedback form carrying the valuable feedback of the mystery shopper is crucial for a company as it gets to know its market competitiveness through it. The feedback is further used to carry out the necessary product or service improvement.

Due to the accurate brand analysis it performs, mystery shopping is being used by companies from various domains, like retail, hospitality, eateries, banking and finance, tourism, etc. Therefore, mystery shoppers get the opportunity to travel across various assigned locations and interact with a lot of people with varied opinions. Their opinions also help a great deal in carrying out a mystery assignment and in creating an unbiased report on the same.

Mystery Shopping Part-time Lucrative Jobs, Earning Great Rewards through Mystery Shopping

Those looking forward to taking up unique and challenging market research jobs can try their hands on mystery or secret shopping. Mystery shopping, also known as frontline evaluation is a simple part-time job that involves a simple market research concept. A secret shopper is instructed as per the client’s brand analysis requirements and is assigned with a secret shopping assignment, which he is required to carry out in the assigned store or outlet. The shoppers need to pose as regular customers, evaluate product conditions along with the customer service and create a report on the shopping experience.

To qualify as a secret shopper, one need not possess specific educational qualifications or any kind of technical knowledge. Secret shopping can be done by any literate individual having good observational skills and to some extent, good and logical writing skills with the correct usage of grammar. It’s all about giving unbiased feedback on product or service competence in the form of written or recorded reports. The data collected through the mystery shopping reports are extremely valuable for companies who take their major product or service related decisions based on the reports. Hence mystery shoppers play a crucial role in improving brand effectiveness and thereby helping companies increase sales. Besides, inadequate customer service is addressed with equal importance so as to improve their existing standards and also reward some of the outstanding performers.

Though companies can directly hire mystery shoppers, they generally do not do so. Instead, they delegate the complete responsibility of hiring and designing mystery shopping assignments to good mystery shopping companies.

The job of a mystery shopper, as mentioned earlier, involves visiting numerous stores, especially in the areas within his reach and disguise as regular customers in order to thoroughly check the product conditions, store maintenance, and the customer service offered by the frontline staff – all these without letting out a small hint of the ongoing affair. This is the reason why mystery shopping jobs are challenging and one-of-their-types.

The biggest advantage of being a mystery shopper is that he can enjoy great benefits like purchase products, enjoy exclusive dinner at expensive restaurants, watch the latest releases in posh movie theatres, go on small vacations with family, and so on – all these free of cost! Besides, mystery shoppers also get paid in cash or check either on biweekly or monthly basis, after they complete the assignments successfully and submit them for review.

The reports created post the assignments can be filed electronically or can be mailed to the companies.

To get started with mystery shopping, one needs to search for legitimate mystery shopping jobs and sign up with them. Like paid surveys, mystery shopping field is also full of scams. Many mystery shopping companies charge membership fees so as to provide them with list of mystery shopping opportunities. Hence it is essential to check the legal existence of the mystery shopping companies with consumer forums before signing up with them.

Although mystery shopping is a lucrative part-time job that can help reap great rewards, it cannot replace a full-time job and its long term benefits. With mystery shopping, one can earn enough to suffice the additional requirements or save an extra amount at the end of every month.

Traditional and Contemporary Mystery Shopping Methods, Significance of Modern day Market Research through Mystery Shopping Techniques

Mystery shopping has become one of the most popular part time jobs of recent times. The reason behind such popularity is its unique job profile and the benefits it showers on every mystery shopper. However, due to lack of adequate information, many beginners fail to enter into this industry as they are led away by false publicity or wrong information from unreliable sources. This has somewhat degraded the reputation of this wonderful part-time job. This article deals with the factual description on the mystery shopping jobs field.

Since its advent in the mid 1940s, mystery shopping has been widely accepted as an efficient and somewhat invincible market research tool. The only notable difference is the traditional and the modern methods of their implementation. Initially, it was nothing more than a surprise check by professionals who used to pose as whimsical customers and had some very loyal employees fired due to small reasons. Hence it was considered to be an employee extermination tool instead of brand assessment. Over the years, this definition and its mode of application has gained a major face lift. Today, it is more of a brand evaluation tool rather than a tool for terminating honest and loyal employees.

Many big companies have realised the importance of modern day mystery shopping methods and their benefits and hence have made it their prime brand assessment tool. They hire market research companies who design mystery shopping assignments as per the clients’ requirements and hire individuals for carrying out the assignments. The individuals once hired are provided with adequate training on the various applicable mystery shopping methods apart from being instructed with the client company’s specific guidelines. This is done prior to almost every mystery shopping assignment so that secret shoppers can carry out the assignments impeccably. The simple motive behind such mystery shopping assignments is to assess the performance of the frontline staff and assistants, product condition, store cleanliness and maintenance, and above all, find out the customers’ opinions on the overall brand effectiveness. With passing days, the battle between the brands is getting fierce. Through mystery shopping assignments, many companies check out their rival’s performance and accordingly implement more effective strategies for better performance.

As mentioned earlier, mystery shopping is one part time job that showers every mystery shopper with immense benefits. These include, shopping around with family and friends, dining out at expensive restaurants, enjoying the latest releases in the most popular movie theatres, going on quick tours with family, visiting amusement parks with kids, getting to keep some of the best products of the client company’s brand, get some expensive facial therapies done – all for free apart from getting paid in cash for the successful submission of the assignment.

Though it is considered as one of the most fun-filled jobs of all times, mystery shopping jobs throw many difficult challenges at the mystery shoppers. The biggest challenge is that a mystery shopper is required to hide his actual identity while on an assignment and pose as a regular customer. At the same time he needs to keep an eye on every single ongoing in the store and create an unbiased and error-free report secretly once the assignment is done. A small mistake might hamper the brand improvement decision of the company and hence the mystery shopper’s job might be in trouble.

To qualify as a mystery shopper, one need not possess special technical skills, high educational degrees or prior experience. It is a highly responsible job and companies expect the secret shoppers to have good surveillance skills, fair writing skills with the correct grammar usage and have an impartial outlook – all these so that they can provide the companies with correct and unbiased brand reports.

Getting Paid for Mystery Shopping Assignments, Mystery Shopping Market Research Techniques for Perfect Brand Assessment

Just like paid surveys and other work at home jobs, mystery shopping is yet another exciting part time profession. The best part is that this market research tool is one of its kinds and is approved by many big companies worldwide. In fact, it provides companies with exact brand assessment reports and hence many companies of various domains employ this market analysis tool. Again, just like the online job industry, the mystery shopping industry is also targeted by scam and fake companies. Therefore, people need to be careful before joining a mystery shopping job provider.

A typical mystery shopping assignment requires a mystery shopper or secret shopper to pose as a regular customer and interact with other customers as well the frontline staff in an outlet. Their identity is kept a secret throughout the assignment. During the secret shopping task, a secret shopper needs to check, rather scrutinize minute details, like, the conditions of the products, the maintenance of the store, cleanliness, behaviour of the front line staff and their aptness in attending to the customers. Once the assignment is successfully completed and the report is submitted, it is forwarded to the senior authority for review. Only after approving the report, a secret shopper receives his payment. Generally, it takes a week’s time to complete a mystery shopping assignment.

After observing the details in a particular outlet, mystery shoppers might have to fill up some short questionnaires comprising questions on the customer service offered in the store. Mystery shoppers can fill up these questionnaires based on their observations and submit them either in person or online. The questionnaires vary in length and the questions asked too vary according to the products or services concerned.

Before signing up with a mystery shopping provider, one must check whether the company asks for any kind of initial investments or other irrelevant details, like, credit card, SSN or bank account details. Needless to say, such companies should be avoided straight away. Some mystery shopping assignments might require mystery shoppers to purchase a product or two as a part of the task. In such case, the amount spent from their pockets is reimbursed by the companies along with their pay.

Mystery shopping jobs have exciting benefits in store for the mystery shoppers. During his tenure as a mystery shopper, he can enjoy movies in theatres with friends, dine out with family, visit amusement parks with kids and enjoy exciting rides, get to keep expensive products of the employer’s own brand, and so on – free of cost! However, the job of a mystery shopper is not that easy as it seems since it requires rigorous travelling from one store to another, keep an eye on every single happening in a store, create a detailed report on the same without missing out on the important events. At the same time, a mystery shopper needs to ensure that he creates a precise, unbiased and correct report without any grammatical error. The report should be kept simple and easy to understand so that companies can base their business decisions on the gathered output.

Mystery shopping – past time which provides us with money

We know numerous individuals shopping as just as a past time. Individual spend almonds hours in malls looking forward to out that perfect buy as per their desire. Despite the fact that this may not have excellent impact on our wallet, just think what if one could actually get paid to doing shopping. There are many mystery shopping organisation that do just that. They recommend paying us for doing just that, shopping at various shops where we actually get paid and we also get to keep what we brought.

The reason organisations recommend mystery shopping considerate is they are looking to get better their product or service. Just by hiring mystery shoppers they could obtain much needed market research data. This is precious for organisations who would like to know about the shopping experience and feedback/feelings of an average shopper. They could observe customer service, response to enquiries and the general shopping experience overall from the information mystery shoppers gather for them. With retail set to prolong to raise and the billions of dollars that consumers spend each year, many retailers are set to grow much required strategic advantages to assist them contend more competitively.

So how is the idea of getting paid as a mystery shopper. First we need to register our interest to one of the many organisations that offer such services. Once we are registered on their database they would begin emailing us with new opportunities as they grow. The opportunities vary greatly and would request to whatever our taste. We would find fast food restaurants, retailers, cafes and even banks. By limiting the opportunities to our geographic area we would save ourselves from needless travel.

We have the elasticity to decide and pick the ones we want to do. We could do as many or as little as we like. We would be given directions on each shopping experience and the information that the organisation would like us to report back on. Once we have completed the shopping practice we simply submit our report and would get paid.

The more consistent and reliable we become the more opportunities are sent our way. So be tolerant when we first start. When we first start we may find many job occasions one week and not many the next. That's the character of it and we tend to require being quick in responding to our emails as some accepted jobs could go fast. But once we get the hang of things then it becomes easier to just handle our time and schedule.

Mystery Shopping Assignments for Additional Monthly Income

Mystery shopping jobs are no more mysterious as they used to be when the concept was first introduced. Thanks to the modernization of market research – companies have found out various ways to analyse the recent market trends and gather consumers’ standpoints on products and services. As such mystery shopping methods have also been modified to a great extent. Today, mystery shopping jobs are numerous and are open to all individuals above the age of eighteen. These paid jobs are generally available in all major cities having big stores, restaurants, banks, movie theatres, gas stations, and other retail outlets.

Every company aims at achieving a big brand name and for this they need to gather consumer feedback on their products so that they can improve them further. Hence they hire market research companies who in turn hire individuals as mystery shoppers. Mystery shopping companies always have vacancies due to many individuals quitting this job due to lack of interest or inadequate performance. The companies provide thorough training to all the newly appointed candidates before they start off with the mystery shopping assignments.

After companies provide instructions to the mystery shoppers, they set out on their assignments. After going to the assigned store or outlet, the secret shopper needs to disguise as a regular customer and keep an eye on every single detail, like product conditions, store maintenance, conduct of the employees, their quickness in resolving customers’ issues, etc. These need to be noted down secretly and submitted to the mystery shopping companies, who then pay the mystery shoppers in cash or allow them to keep a product of their brand for free.

Since mystery shopping jobs are more popular in major cities, the competition to get this job is tougher. In such cases, those who reside in remote or less populated areas stand a good chance provided that they meet the requirements of the mystery shopping companies. Further on performing better, companies would have them laden with some of their most prestigious secret shopping assignments.

To become a mystery shopper, one need not possess specific skills for successful accomplishment of the assignments. One just needs to be careful, observant and have good writing skills with the correct usage of grammar. Companies conduct training sessions to polish the skills of every hired mystery shopper and mould the skills as per the requirement of the assignment. After completing the assignments, mystery shoppers are required to submit detailed reports based on their shopping experiences to the mystery shopping companies. Those who cannot submit the reports in person can submit them online.

To boost the daily or monthly income, one needs to adhere to the secret shopping field, join multiple mystery shopping companies, and take up as many mystery shopping assignments as possible. And like any other online paid job, the more assignments submitted successfully, the more would be the income.