The term mystery shopping refers to where market researchers "act" as potential consumers and evaluate to what extent the target business' services meet a range of customer service standards. Many retail stores and hotel chains conduct this sort of research on a regular basis. The people carrying out the research typically have no special pre-existing knowledge regarding the business or the industry that it operates in. 

How is Discovery Research's Approach Different? 

At Discovery Research we believe that additional value is added to the research outcomes by having highly skilled mystery shoppers with a thorough understanding of the industry context that our client's business operates in. This allows for "higher level" observations to be made that the average mystery shopping research is likely to miss. This is particularly important in situations such as: 

	Where there is representation of a manufacturer's or service provider's brand by third party retailers and the retailer also represents competing brands.
	Where it is important to observe and evaluate how non-price benefits are being communicated to customers, e.g. product warranty, durability, technical superiority, etc.
	Where there are specific marketing messages that should be communicated and/or where the use of marketing collateral and point of sale materials are to be tested.
	Where the product or service tested is such that it is not generally a repeat purchase and the average consumer (and thus the average mystery shopper) would not have established what is both good and bad service.
	Where our client's objectives focus on gathering information on competitors as an input to strategic decision-making.

The general industry approach to mystery shopping is to have many researchers (of a variety of skills and experiences) out in the field gathering information.

Discovery Research's approach is also different in that we ensure that the one mystery shopping researcher conducts all visits for the project. Given the "higher level" observations and evaluations that we offer our clients, we believe that it is critical to have one researcher with a "consistent set of eyes" evaluating all target businesses. This also allows for more strategic industry-level observations to be made that could otherwise be missed. 

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