How Mystery Shopping Can Improve Your Marketing Strategies
How Mystery Shopping Can Improve Your Marketing Strategies
Written by Ron Jacobsen
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?How-Mystery-Shopping-Can-Improve-Your-Marketing-Strategies&id=7172722
Companies often require certain information about their businesses which can best be discovered by hiring a third-party marketing research outfit who will conduct the research and then analyze your data. Directly interacting with the consumers and recording their reactions and experiences while shopping or while in a business establishment is possibly the best way to determine if the company is performing well, or if a company’s services may be further improved. To conduct the research discreetly, companies hire mystery shoppers who will gather this information and document their shopping experience by posing as customers.
Mystery shopping is able to sufficiently establish the level of performance of any business, or the effectiveness of its customer service. The mystery shopper may be asked to do a series of assignments, such as purchasing a product, making inquiries, or complaining about a service or product. After this, the mystery shopper will send his or her observations from the consumer experience or interaction.
Mystery shoppers conduct site monitoring to gather important business information, and determine compliance, based on a number of customer experience and performance measures. The marketing strategies implemented by businesses are evaluated and analyzed based on these performance measures. The results are then collated and analyzed by marketing researchers.
But the data gathered from mystery shopping becomes much more accurate and effective if the reports are transmitted within a certain time frame. Introducing mobile qualitative research to mystery shopping enhances the accuracy of any data that may be acquired from the research activity as it makes it possible for participants to send in their reports in real-time. Furthermore, the results are uploaded to the marketing researchers and made available to clients online. Mystery shoppers will be using their cell phones to collect information, translating to fast, accurate and more in-depth information, which will only improve the overall quality of the research in the long run.
Through mobile qualitative research, results are instantaneously transmitted to a central server and thus, managers or anyone with a password may access the results. Consequently, it makes it possible for branches to compare the performance of one branch with another through the reports of mystery shoppers, and this may be done even on a daily basis.
What this means for businesses is that they are now empowered with rich data to act on discrepancies, identify poor performers instantly, and thus, correct or adjust their business strategies to improve customer service.
