A Shopaholic’s Guide to Mystery Shopping
Being a shopaholic doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. You can change this apparent bane of your life into a boon. And the best thing about all this is that you don’t have to give up shopping at all. In fact, you have to shop even more. Yes, become a mystery shopper and get paid to do what you do best.
Mystery shopping can get you refunded for products you purchase or services you use. As a mystery shopper you get to enjoy free products, services and entertainment, and all you have to do is just be yourself – a shopaholic. All you need to do is get hired by a mystery shopping company and you’re ready to go off on your very paid-for shopping spree.
How does mystery shopping really work?
Mystery shopping is based on the idea of allowing people to try products and services for free, in an effort to encourage them to share their views about products and experiences regarding services with their manufacturers or providers. An important thing to keep in mind in this regard is that mystery shoppers are not to evaluate products or services they try in a positive manner just because they get the products or services for free, or get paid to evaluate those products or services. What is expected of mystery shopper is to provide unbiased and impartial feedback that accurately describes their true experiences with a particular product or service.
Why do mystery shoppers get paid to shop?
Business establishments continually strive to improve their customer service in order to give their customers a great shopping experience. They need “actual” people to assess and evaluate the level of customer service they provide, and give feedback about their shopping experience with them. This is where the role of mystery shoppers comes in. Mystery shoppers evaluate and assess the customer service provided at a particular business establishment by purchasing specific products or using specific services in a prespecified manner. Then mystery shoppers provide their feedback about their shopping experience with the business establishment. It’s a win-win situation for both parties. Business establishments get unbiased and impartial customer feedback and mystery shoppers get to keep the products they purchased for free.
Marketing companies often have trouble convincing consumers to share their views about particular products and experiences with particular shopping locations. Most people have busy routines that prevent marketing companies from collecting feedback from them. But consumer opinion is crucial for companies if they are to develop their products and services as closely tuned to the needs and tastes of their consumers as possible. Therefore, marketing companies use mystery shopping as an effective market research tool. Mystery shopping greatly facilitates communication between companies and the consumers of their products or services. Thus, mystery shoppers and mystery shopping immensely help numerous manufacturers and service providers all across Australia in surviving in today’s extremely competitive business world.
What are the benefits of being a mystery shopper?
The greatest benefit for a shopaholic in being a mystery shopper is the opportunity to shop to his/her heart’s content, and not have to pay for any of the purchases. As a mystery shopper you’ll be able to practice your most favourite activity – shopping, shopping and more shopping all day long – for free.
Mystery shopping will not only give you the chance to purchase a wide variety of products and services for free, but even get paid for providing feedback about the products or services. Usually, mystery shoppers are required to provide feedback in the form of a report. This could either be a handwritten report, or an online report. Such a report is usually a really simple questionnaire or evaluation sheet that mystery shoppers are required to fill out and submit. And it neither takes much effort nor much time to write such reports. In fact, some mystery shoppers really enjoy writing such reports, as doing so gives them the opportunity to thoroughly think about and evaluate the new products or services they just tried. They find this activity extremely useful as it gives them the opportunity to plan their future purchases.
A great benefit of working as a mystery shopper is that you get to find better alternative to the products and services you currently use. While working as a mystery shopper you get the opportunity to evaluate the manufacturers and providers of the various products and services used at your home by comparing them to others you get to try during the course of your work. Thus, you get to try everything and everyone for free, and keep the ones that give you your money’s worth.
