• Our Mission
• Global Network
• Sectors
• Specialists
• Innovations
• Methods
  • CATI
  • CASI
  • CAPI
  • CAWI
  • PAPI
  • Postal
  • Mystery Shopping
  • Psychologic Market Research
  • Omnibus
• Fact Based Consultancy

Mystery Shopping and Mystery Calls

The Quality of the Brand

Marketing teaches us that brands are created in the mind of the consumer. The control of the brand and the influencing of the consumer then follows as a result of the implementation of the whole marketing mix. The quality, as such, has its root at the heart of the brand. A differentiation must be made between products and services in the assessment and the measurement of quality. In the retail business and sales, as well as in the whole of the service industry, it is not only the quality of the product which is to be focussed upon.

What does Mystery Shopping measure?

Product quality in sales and the retail business means brand quality in the sectors:

• Service: competence, friendliness and waiting times
• The quality of advice and product recommendation
• Living from service standards
• Cross Selling
• Presentation of goods
• Availability of goods in the range
• Indication of prices
• Cleanliness and
• Implementation of marketing activities

 

Quality control during the production of the goods is standard practice. But what about the services you offer? Mystery Shopping offers you a means of measuring the quality of the services from your company so you can then adjust your performance in a positive way. Mystery Shopping transforms data into targeted measures!

The areas in which Mystery Shopping can be used are broad ranging. In addition to the classical retail business sector, GfK carries out mystery shopping activities in the automobile, tourism, banking and insurance sectors as well as in telecommunications, to name but a few.

What is the purpose of Mystery Shopping?

Mystery Shopping makes it possible to:

• Monitor the advisory and service quality within the company as well as the adherence to defined guidelines in the context of customer contact in an objective manner
• Check the development and efficacy of measures which have been introduced by time line comparisons
• Assure and monitor quality standards
• Determine strengths and weaknesses and make deductions about the potential of improvements
• Motivate the staff to develop customer-orientated attitudes and behaviour (inter and intra branch competition)
• Marketing support  (Public Relations and Image purposes)

Our recommendation is that Mystery Shopping activities should be carried out at regular intervals. Clear performance objectives can be set by the definition of benchmarks which can serve both as possible motivators within the company and also as a parameter in a bonus or commission system. In addition, temporarily implemented Mystery Shopping studies can be made use of to check and evaluate individual marketing activities.

GfK Interviewer team & Mystery Shopper team

In the last year, GfK has used the services of some 400 interviewers and 100 mystery shoppers and, as such, is the clear "number one” in this field in the Austrian market. The requirements set of interviewers and mystery shopper and their qualifications are wide ranging and different. Interviewers must have the gift of being able to induce respondents to undertake interviews and must be good at listening and asking questions. Mystery Shoppers receive clear briefings and evaluate both the businesses and their service personnel according to exactly predefined criteria. The evaluation is carried out according to objective standards.

GfK places a great emphasis on the selection and training of their mystery shoppers. Because of the large numbers of Mystery Shoppers, who are distributed across the whole of Austria, it is possible to use regional testers for all Mystery Shopping surveys, recruited from a wide variety of socio-demographic and socio-economic backgrounds and life stages.

GfK Quality Assurance

The extremely high quality standards we insist on in our Mystery Shopping activities mean we are able to guarantee an absolute minimum of bias on the part of the interviewer:

• Rotation of the test persons for each branch
• Acquisition of information which is carried out in a consistent manner subject to exact guidelines (briefing)
• Exact instructions for assessments (briefing documentation)
• Use of carefully selected and experienced mystery shoppers (training)
• Access to the GfK control centre for mystery shoppers
• Plausibility checks and monitoring of the mystery shoppers

GfK Mystery Shopping Team

At GfK Austria we have had many years of experience in the Mystery Shopping sector with universal and direct banks, real estate companies, property financing, the gaming sector and many other service sectors (commerce, the pharmaceuticals industry, mobility, fuel market, etc.) – and we want to tell you what works and what doesn’t. The team from GfK Austria will provide support for you in the planning, execution and analysis of a mystery shopping study. We supply the following services for your benefit:

• Advice on methodological aspects, organisation and planning of the project
• Active collaboration in the design of the questionnaire and drawing up of test scenarios
• Briefing of the mystery shopper
• Carrying out of the field work including controls
• On-line collection of the data from the questionnaire
• Checking of data and plausibility checks
• Reporting which is made-to-measure and orientated on implementation at various levels – individual test reports, regional benchmarks, strategic analysis of company-wide results
• Delivery of the results within 24 to 48 hours
• GfK Fact-Based Consultancy: support from our consultants in the implementation of the market research results in your company