Navigating the Realm of Mystery Shopping: A Newcomer’s Perspective
Have you ever heard of a research method called ‘Mystery Shopping’? I’m willing to bet that many of you who are curious and have expertise in social research are already familiar with this method. But what about product researchers or UX researchers? I think it’s just me who wasn’t aware of what Mystery Shopping is.
In the context of GoCement, I had the opportunity to gain insights into conducting research through the Mystery Shopper approach. Drawing from the article authored by Mas Christian, a Senior Research Manager at Lazada, Mystery Shopping can be understood as a research methodology used to evaluate and analyze the quality of customer service and the overall customer experience provided by businesses. The fundamental theory behind mystery shopping is to gather objective and unbiased information about how customers are treated and the level of service they receive during their interactions with various businesses or service providers.
In Short, It’s like a special way of checking how good stores or services are without them knowing you’re checking. It’s a bit like being a secret detective in a store or a bank.
So, let’s say you walk into a store, and you’re not just there to shop. You’re there to watch and learn. You see how the people working there greet you and if they’re friendly. You notice if the line at the cashier is moving quickly or slowly. And you pay attention to what the other customers do — do they look around or buy things right away?
All these things give us important information about how the store works and how good their service is. It’s almost like being a spy, but instead of using cool gadgets, you’re using your eyes and ears to collect secrets about how the store runs.
But here’s where things can go wrong. Once, I tried to be a secret shopper with just two people, and guess what? One of them was me! This turned out to be a problem because I wasn’t really the right kind of person to use the stuff I was checking. It’s like if I tried to act like someone who knows a lot about building things when I don’t really know much. So, I couldn’t understand what someone who’s really good at building stuff would want.
What I learned from that is, if you want to do Mystery Shopping right, you need enough time and money. Also, it’s way better to find someone who’s a lot like the people who would use the thing you’re checking. That way, the information you find will really help make things better. If you can’t find the right person, doing it yourself might work, but it’s still a smart idea to find someone who’s a good match for what you’re studying.
