A question the other day sparked off a whole chain of memories about mystery shopping as well as societal changes in the past 50+ years.
When I was first doing ‘market research’ and ‘mystery shopping’ back in the early 1960’s a lot of what we did was knock on doors interviews. Most generally a customer had either mailed in the coupon off their product box for a free product or sample, or they had registered for a contest. Most of the time you had a name, so when the door was answered you politely greeted Mrs. ____ and asked if you could ask her a few questions for a survey. If indeed the person who answered was Mrs. ____, you usually were invited in and offered a cup of coffee or a glass of iced tea. And you never hesitated about accepting their invitation to come in or for a beverage. You asked your questions, made your notes on your clip board and thanked her. Usually she was so happy to see somebody she would ask you a few questions so the real skill was disengagement to get out to your next visit. I shopped in the ‘slums’ of my Southern town, public housing, working poor and middle class neighborhoods and the affluent neighborhoods. Never did I meet anyone who was hostile or anything less than cordial. I can’t imagine even attempting to do knock on the door interviews today.
Another type of survey was to find out how many people had a ___________ in a geographic area or had ever heard of a ____________. One of these was a major study of 9 block areas with a particular address at their center. I did one of these to see how many telephones and telephone lines there were in those 3 block by 3 block areas. It was an eye opener that in the poorest areas of town the address given me was likely to be the pastor who actually had a telephone—one line, one phone—and the phone was most usually on his back porch so folks in the neighborhood could come use the phone because nobody else had one. If there was an incoming call, somebody would run over and get the person being called. So in the 9 block area around the pastor I was unlikely to find any more phone lines or phones unless there was another pastor in that area. In middle class areas there was at least one phone and phone line, with many homes having two or three phones on the one line. I remember being somewhat jealous of one house, where there were five kids, that had three phone lines—one for the parents, one for the boys and one for the girls.
Then there were the ‘mystery shops’, which were mostly going into stores to count ‘faces’ of product. How many pegs in the cooler case had Oscar Mayer sandwich meats on the front of the stack? How many of the packages of bacon you could see without moving anything were Oscar Mayer? How many rows on the shelves were for Sunshine saltines? How many for Campbell’s Tomato soup and how many total for all Campbell’s soups? What brands of instant chocolate pudding were being sold and what were their prices?
Our ‘most deceptive’ was when we went to the houses of people who had entered a contest sponsored by Phillip’s Milk of Magnesia to show them a ‘pilot’ of a new TV show. The ‘pilot’ was a 15 minute soap opera type thing and there was an ad in the middle of it for Phillip’s. At the end I would ask a few questions about the show and a lot of questions about the commercial. Pretty uniformly as soon as the ad started my hostess would offer me a refill of my beverage and excuse herself to get a refill for herself from the kitchen. She would arrive back as the commercial was finishing. I guess some things don’t change too much. I still get up and leave the room during the commercials. That was also my worst job because I was having to haul a 40 pound metal projector box up to the house in July in the South, and in our hilly area that usually meant a couple of flights of concrete steps up from the sidewalk to reach the front door. As added joy, the box had sharp corners that ripped skirts and left bruises and scrapes.
We were hourly employees of a consolidator who negotiated for jobs from a number of different companies. Usually she would get sent one copy of the instructions and one questionnaire. Someone would then type up the questionnaire on a ditto stencil if few copies were needed or on a mimeograph stencil if many copies were needed. The set of instructions on how to actually perform the job were posted on the bulletin board in the office.
When I was first doing ‘market research’ and ‘mystery shopping’ back in the early 1960’s a lot of what we did was knock on doors interviews. Most generally a customer had either mailed in the coupon off their product box for a free product or sample, or they had registered for a contest. Most of the time you had a name, so when the door was answered you politely greeted Mrs. ____ and asked if you could ask her a few questions for a survey. If indeed the person who answered was Mrs. ____, you usually were invited in and offered a cup of coffee or a glass of iced tea. And you never hesitated about accepting their invitation to come in or for a beverage. You asked your questions, made your notes on your clip board and thanked her. Usually she was so happy to see somebody she would ask you a few questions so the real skill was disengagement to get out to your next visit. I shopped in the ‘slums’ of my Southern town, public housing, working poor and middle class neighborhoods and the affluent neighborhoods. Never did I meet anyone who was hostile or anything less than cordial. I can’t imagine even attempting to do knock on the door interviews today.
Another type of survey was to find out how many people had a ___________ in a geographic area or had ever heard of a ____________. One of these was a major study of 9 block areas with a particular address at their center. I did one of these to see how many telephones and telephone lines there were in those 3 block by 3 block areas. It was an eye opener that in the poorest areas of town the address given me was likely to be the pastor who actually had a telephone—one line, one phone—and the phone was most usually on his back porch so folks in the neighborhood could come use the phone because nobody else had one. If there was an incoming call, somebody would run over and get the person being called. So in the 9 block area around the pastor I was unlikely to find any more phone lines or phones unless there was another pastor in that area. In middle class areas there was at least one phone and phone line, with many homes having two or three phones on the one line. I remember being somewhat jealous of one house, where there were five kids, that had three phone lines—one for the parents, one for the boys and one for the girls.
Then there were the ‘mystery shops’, which were mostly going into stores to count ‘faces’ of product. How many pegs in the cooler case had Oscar Mayer sandwich meats on the front of the stack? How many of the packages of bacon you could see without moving anything were Oscar Mayer? How many rows on the shelves were for Sunshine saltines? How many for Campbell’s Tomato soup and how many total for all Campbell’s soups? What brands of instant chocolate pudding were being sold and what were their prices?
Our ‘most deceptive’ was when we went to the houses of people who had entered a contest sponsored by Phillip’s Milk of Magnesia to show them a ‘pilot’ of a new TV show. The ‘pilot’ was a 15 minute soap opera type thing and there was an ad in the middle of it for Phillip’s. At the end I would ask a few questions about the show and a lot of questions about the commercial. Pretty uniformly as soon as the ad started my hostess would offer me a refill of my beverage and excuse herself to get a refill for herself from the kitchen. She would arrive back as the commercial was finishing. I guess some things don’t change too much. I still get up and leave the room during the commercials. That was also my worst job because I was having to haul a 40 pound metal projector box up to the house in July in the South, and in our hilly area that usually meant a couple of flights of concrete steps up from the sidewalk to reach the front door. As added joy, the box had sharp corners that ripped skirts and left bruises and scrapes.
We were hourly employees of a consolidator who negotiated for jobs from a number of different companies. Usually she would get sent one copy of the instructions and one questionnaire. Someone would then type up the questionnaire on a ditto stencil if few copies were needed or on a mimeograph stencil if many copies were needed. The set of instructions on how to actually perform the job were posted on the bulletin board in the office.