Mystery shopping: Using deception to measure service performance

This article reports on a program of exploratory research aimed at examinin g the practice of mystery shopping in service organizations. Mystery shoppi ng, a form of participant observation, uses researchers to deceive customer service personnel into believing that they are serving real customers or p otential customers. The research focused on the views of senior managers re sponsible for commissioning mystery shopping research and directors of mark et research agencies responsible for the provision of such research. The re search findings identify the manner in which mystery shopping is used and t he methods used to maximize the reliability of the technique. The study als o revealed that employees' acceptance of this form of deception appears to be critical if the results are to be taken seriously by service personnel a nd if industrial relations within the organization are not to suffer. (C) 2 001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.