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The difference between
Mystery Shopping and Market Research
Mystery shopping and market research both provide very important and
essential information for businesses.
Market research measures expectations and perceptions, while mystery
shopping measures performance. They complement each other, but can never
replace each other.
A customer who has visited an outlet cannot remember the level of detail
that a mystery shopper can, e.g. how many minutes it took from standing
in queue to reaching the till, how many minutes or seconds it took before
the customer was approached and with which words the customer was greeted,
etc. Customer satisfaction studies can reveal what customers feel, but
not the detailed reasons for those feelings, whereas mystery shopping
measures the extent to which the organisation is performing compared
to its own stated customer service standards.
The difference between
Mystery Shopping-projects and Mystery Shopping
Research
Mystery Shopping Projects need to identify individuals
to be able to determine to whom to give feedback, and who to train or
reward. As individuals or teams will be identified, they also need to
be informed in advance. If all units want to use the reports as a working
tool for continuous improvements, all units must be visited.
Mystery Shopping Research does not need to identify individuals,
since the goal is to learn about results only on an aggregated level,
by market segment, region, country etc. All units do not have to be
visited, only a sample with enough measurement parameters so that the
evaluations will be representative for all units. When starting a mystery
shopping project it is valuable to first do a mystery shopping research
to study which areas to prioritise and focus on in the planned mystery
shopping project. Mystery Shopping Research is also a very useful tool
for following up campaigns and resellers' performance.