Thursday, October 22, 2009

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.

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