Make money as a mystery shopper

This document is an article entitled « Make money as a mystery shopper », it comes from The Independent and it was published on the 10th of June 2007.

This article describes how you can do to earn money by testing some products.
The text is composed of 3 parts,
Description of the job
Description of the products you can have to try
Barry Grossman account

Mystery shopping is a tool used by market research companies to measure quality of retail service or gather specific information about products and services.
Mystery shopper posing as normal customers perform specific tasks, such as purchasing a product, asking questions, registering complaints or behaving in certain way, and then provide detailed reports or feedback about their experiences.
To begin you have to register with mystery shopping site such as www.retaileyes.co.uk www.ukims.co.uk or the secret shopper company for example.
Shoppers are often given instructions or procedure to make transaction atypical to make the particular service issue. For instance, mystery shoppers at a restaurant may pretend they are lactose-intolerant, or a clothing store mystery shopper could inquire about gift-wrapping services. They may sometimes be required to take photographs or measurements, return purchases, or count the number of products, seats, and people during the visit. In some states, mystery shoppers must also be licensed as private investigators in order to perform some of the tasks.
From there, the shopper will then submit the data collected to the mystery shopping company in question, the date is then reviewed and analyzed before quantitative and qualitative statistical reports.
For example in a report of a mystery shopper you can see :
- The date and time of the pre-visit phone call
- The name of the store on each side of the store visited
- The number of employees in the store on entering
- How long it takes before the mystery shopper is greeted
- The name