Mystery Shopping – Mind the Ethics in Completing Assignments – How to Choose your Shopping Tasks
Date posted: 2006-09-18
The core of mystery shopping is objectivity. Mystery shopping is a market research method used to improve products and services, and provide valuable customer insights to product and service development, or employee training. The reflections of the mystery shoppers that are hired to pose as real customers should nevertheless follow some good market research practice in order to be legitimate and trustworthy. The Market Research Society has very valuable practical guidelines for fieldwork market activities such as mystery shopping.
Mystery shopping, nevertheless, cannot be used for punitive actions on businesses’ employees. If your boyfriend’s ex is a sales assistant at the shop location of your mystery shopping assignment, you cannot use your evaluation to discredit her before her boss. Or you cannot use your secret shopping assignment for detrimental competitive intelligence. If your family is running a car repair shop, and your secret shopping assignment dispatches you at the competitor’s location, you may be liable for any damages attempted to the reputation of the service provider through irrelevant and unfounded evaluations, or by identifying a particular salesperson. You should carefully find out what you are legally allowed to do as a mystery shopper, in order to avoid potential liability for damages and losses.
As a mystery shopper, you should also have some simple rules in mind when you accept an assignment. Legitimate marketing companies would have clear and precise instructions for completing your task. They will allow for sufficient time to finish both the location-based part of the job, as well as the reporting and evaluation work. You will not be asked for intricate or complicated actions; neither should you agree to participate in activities that might compromise the reliability of the findings that you collect from the shopping site. If you doubt that anything in the assignment instructions may be illegal or dangerous, do not accept the assignment.
Most of all, your mystery shopping assignment must be as realistic and close to a real market transaction as possible. You should feel confident with the assignment and easy with the things you are asked to do. Remember that mystery shopping must be fun and exciting, so you can truly enjoy walking in the shoes of your mystery shopper alter ego!
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