The success of the mystery shopping exercise is how well brands have defined their mystery shopper
Are you engaging mystery shopper for your business management and customer service improvement activities?
Have you briefed the agency conducting the mystery shopping adequately?
Are you getting the desired results?
I have observed clients have a clear end objective in mind when they plan for mystery shopping but basic inputs on mystery shopper and intended behavior during the mystery shopping are hardly discussed.
This article seeks to have the profile and behavior of the mystery shopper right.
Background
Brands generally define their intended consumers by gender, age, socio economic classification (NCCS/SEC), and some surrogates.
After the customers increase, the salesperson has a broad idea of the customer.
These interactions are unstructured and are not helpful in formulating the profile of the customer/ consumers.
Wikipedia describes a mystery shopper as:
“Mystery shoppers typically mirror common consumer behaviour to test the consistency of the habits deemed important to a specific brand or industry”
It is important that the brand defines two aspects:
- The consumer
- Expected consumer behavior
Rule 1# Define your target consumer
Let us first discuss the consumer
In the mystery shopper’s definition, it is mentioned as consumer not customer.
Let us first understand one important aspect – who is a consumer and who is a customer?
The customer, which refers to a person who buys the goods and pays the expense for it whereas the consumer is the one who uses the goods.
A customer may or may not also be a consumer.
An ultimate customer may be a consumer as well, but just as equally may have purchased items for someone else to consume. An intermediate customer is not a consumer at all.
So, here we need to first understand the consumer and the customer.
Do brands have information about the consumer and the customer?
Let us understand the details required for understanding your consumer/ customer.
- Demographic profile of your consumer/customer
- Gender
- Age
- Education
- Occupation
- Durable ownership, etc.
- Accompaniment – With whom do they shop?
- Who pays – Who makes the payment for the purchases?
- Who is the end-user of the product – self, someone in the family, etc
- What are the pain points consumers seek to address?
- What are the key triggers for buying your brand? Are these different from category triggers?
Based on the above types of questions, we will be able to able to identify consumers and customers.
If the brand has conducted some profiling study or some segmentation study, they will have a better idea of the brand-consumer.
Rule 2# Define the intended consumer behaviour in the store
The behavior of a new consumer will be totally different from that of a regular consumer.
While profiling, we have placed our criteria of category user and brand user.
But, a better understanding is required of how a regular consumer behaves.
- How do consumers shop? What are the key evaluation points?
- Does the consumer compare products in the same category or also different category also?
- What is the occasion for the purchase – this will vary by product category.
- What are customer segments for the category? (This can arrive at through a segmentation study)
- What are the good practices of a consumer at a store?
- What are the bad practices of a consumer which should be avoided? (to be undertaken if it is to be evaluated)
If the brand has information on all these aspects, these should be shared with the market research agency.
If adequate information is not available or the reference data is too old to be relied upon – it is better a survey should be conducted to fill the gaps.
Rule 3# Type of mystery shopper required for the study
The brand needs to take a call on the type of mystery shopper required:
- MR agency trained mystery shopper to conduct the evaluation or
- Actual consumer who is accompanied with the mystery shopper
The first case is fine for a product category used by everyone
The 2nd category – Actual consumer + mystery shopper should be used where:
- It will be difficult for a mystery shopper to portray an actual consumer high-value product ie. mid-price or premium SUV customer
- A product targeted for persons with some defects / who require a solution to resolve some issues. ie: person requiring contact lenses, etc
Rule 4# Have a statistically valid sample size per outlet if data is to be read an outlet level
Clients generally have a low sample per outlet.
If data is represented at the outlet level, the low sample will have high data variability issues – for tracking studies.
Rule 5# Decision of making a purchase v/s not making a purchase during mystery shopping
Making a purchase may not be mandatory but reaching closure is the most ideal way of conducting mystery shopping especially when the product is price sensitive and there is cost-cutting by salesmen.
Since there cannot be checks for the activities of a mystery shopper, it is difficult to assess how much the mystery shopper has pushed during the negotiation.
The expectations for this phase need to be clear.
If there is no purchase, then it is better to read the data directionally only.
Rule 6# Pay fair price for mystery shopping
Mystery shopping activity is a costly activity especially when you have many outlets spread across various cities, low sample per outlet, etc.
Since the validation of the exercise is a challenge it is better to pay a reasonably fair amount.
Summary
These rules will form the guidelines for the mystery shopper recruitments.
By adhering to these, the brand can have the mystery shopper mirroring the common consumer behaviour.
Other activities at the stores can be chalked out based upon the SOP or evaluation criteria.
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