Mystery Shopper Insights (MSI)
The Need for Mystery Shopping
Indian retail is witnessing a paradigm shift with modern retail slowly replacing traditional forms of retailing. This trend is visible not just in urban India but rural areas as well. Competition is increasing between various Indian and International players vying for a share of Indian shopper’s wallet.
In this context, a customer’s in-store experience is becoming increasingly important for any retail marketer. High quality of services rendered in the outlet act as a differentiator for the marketer. It also enhances loyalty, generates positive word-of-mouth and saves costs for the retailer!
Mystery shopping is now being used by many organizations to evaluate their in-store service standards and conformity to the processes. Trained shoppers anonymously evaluate infrastructure, processes, service delivery, customer service, operations, employee integrity, merchandising and product quality. The shoppers independently audit processes & staff, giving constructive actionable input for improvement of service delivery.
Objectives of Any Mystery Audit Program
- To check conformance to guidelines for service delivery as laid-out by the retailer leading to the following:
- Identifying high & low conformance units
- Specifying service delivery improvement areas
- Benchmarking against service delivery by competition
- Creating a baseline for future monitoring
- To measure the effectiveness of training imparted to employees
- To recognize good employees based on findings of the audits
- To measure the extent of brand advocacy by multi-brand outlets
- To audit prices through a pre-designed negotiation process and determine market operating prices
Mystery Shopper Insights (MSI)
Specialist team at IMRB International has experience with nearly 30 regular mystery shopping programs conducted across diverse sectors. By Mystery Shopping Insights, IMRB helps managers in both tactical and strategic decision-making processes and also in improving the quality of services provided at the outlet.
IMRB has a team of 40 researchers across Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore who design and manage mystery shopping studies. In addition, we have an excellent pool of trained mystery shoppers with experience of working across various product categories.
