MYSTERY CUSTOMER RESEARCH - COGNITIVE-PROCESSES AFFECTING ACCURACY

Mystery customer research is a technique of quality assessment in the retail sector, where it is called mystery shopping, and also in the se rvice sector. It is growing rapidly in popularity, but research in cog nitive psychology suggests a number of potential threats to the reliab ility and validity of data collected through its use. In particular, v arious factors associated with the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information by mystery customer assessors are likely to influence the accuracy of the results, and individual differences between assessors should also be taken into account in designing mystery customer surve ys. A number of specific recommendations designed to minimise errors a rising from memory failures and distortions are outlined and discussed .