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.
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