I never fill out receipt surveys for sweepstakes entries or coupons when it is a mystery shop receipt. My reasoning is that I feel it would be unethical to fill them out and get an "incentive" for reporting on something I was already being paid to be reporting on as a Mystery Shopper.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you think it's okay to fill them out?

I don't fill them out on principle. I am paid for my observations as a mystery shopper. I don't care to give away my work for free or for a coupon or sweepstakes entry. So it really is not the principle of already being paid for my observations but in general not giving away my observations. I see those surveys on virtually every receipt I get it seems, whether they are part of a shop or not.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/27/2011 03:25AM by Flash.

Your right Flash, receipt responses are free mystery shops for the company. If they could figure out a way to get you to spend 30 minutes and answer 50 questions on their survey, they would eliminate mystery shoppers.

Some may be more "worth it" than others. I have seen the sweepstakes entries, a free entree on your next visit, free dessert, discounts and so on. I just read a post where someone said their receipt offered a $10 gift card for filling out a survey.

So aside from the time/benefit ratio to you, do you think it is wrong or unethical for a mystery shopper to fill one out for a shop they have reported on?

Assuming I did any of the receipt surveys, I probably would not do ones on shop receipts because they have indeed already paid for my observations once.

Hmmmmmm, I don't see it that way at all. I am a customer like anyone else. The Cheesecake Factory $10 gift card I received as Rainy points out, is for providing information through a survey offered by the company. And since I was out $30 anyway, (receiving $40 for a $70 meal for 4 people,) I feel I am totally entitled.

Carol

57carol Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hmmmmmm, I don't see it that way at all. I am a
> customer like anyone else. The Cheesecake Factory
> $10 gift card I received as Rainy points out, is
> for providing information through a survey offered
> by the company. And since I was out $30 anyway,
> (receiving $40 for a $70 meal for 4 people,) I
> feel I am totally entitled.
>
> Carol



I guess when I am on an assignment (for whatever $ amount I agree to), I don't feel like I am "a customer like anyone else".

I have never noticed filling out the surveys as prohibited by any MSCs in their guidelines, however, so maybe it really is fine.

There is at least one shop that I do that explicitly states that if you fill out the survey to get the free item, then it negates your shop and you won't be reimbursed for it.

I do see how giving your info two different ways could be considered double-dipping.

The only justification I could see for it is that generally our reports are an objective evaluation of the location and the couple of surveys I have done (for receipts totally unrelated to a shop) have been opinion surveys. But I still would not do the survey on a shop receipt.

Flash Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The only justification I could see for it is that
> generally our reports are an objective evaluation
> of the location and the couple of surveys I have
> done (for receipts totally unrelated to a shop)
> have been opinion surveys. But I still would not
> do the survey on a shop receipt.

Exactly - and this is why it is not appropriate for one to fill out an opinion survey based on a mystery shop visit. The very nature of you being privy to the mystery shopping form (which lists standards and asks for you to observe to a level of detail that most often a regular customer would never do) makes you an atypical customer. It is possible that you would not even have been in the store/restaurant/venue if you were not mystery shopping. Although you may be a regular customer of the venue, you are not a regular customer during your mystery shopping visit because you are following guidelines and looking for things and possibly asking questions or giving objections that you would not have done if you had visited on your own.

There is a difference between a mystery shop and a customer survey - they serve two totally different purposes and companies and clients who use these marketing research tools correctly, do so when they are trying to measure totally different things. It benefits us all if we keep them separate and do not try to marry them together.

That said the mystery shoppers who are filling out the surveys are really not the problem here - it is the MSC who try to convince the clients that they can deliver BOTH a mystery shop and opinion reasearch in one package using only one method that are failing the system.

The receipt surveys also do not provide that critical information of why a 'normal' customer who came into a location failed to make a purchase. Obviously a 'normal' customer who made a purchase experienced some level of satisfaction or they would not have bought and received a receipt. But how to appeal to the 'normal' customer who took the time to visit their place of business and still bought nothing is the information clients really need, and I don't think that either mystery shopping or customer surveys really answer that question.

Flash Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The receipt surveys also do not provide that
> critical information of why a 'normal' customer
> who came into a location failed to make a
> purchase. Obviously a 'normal' customer who made
> a purchase experienced some level of satisfaction
> or they would not have bought and received a
> receipt. But how to appeal to the 'normal'
> customer who took the time to visit their place of
> business and still bought nothing is the
> information clients really need, and I don't think
> that either mystery shopping or customer surveys
> really answer that question.

I agree with you that customer surveys cultitvated from receipts have an inherent bias (the one you stated, plus a certain demographic tends to respond more than other demographics, further skewing results).

I work in political and governmental polling mostly - so of course for me, obtaining a representative and accurate sample for my work is of utmost concern and as such, I do not have a lot of up to date information on accurate data collection methods for customer sat research (I used to work in it, but that was well before the whole receipt system really got popular). There are of course other ways of collecting data that are quite popular (web surveys from panels like eRewards for example) but those too have their own host of biases.

These are some of the issues that we debate and discuss in the Marketing Research world and some of the reasons I have heard cited as to why MR as a whole is a dying industry (I sincerly hope not, since it is all I know in my life!)

I do want to add (for anyone that cares, admiting that perhaps this is too technical for anyone) that there is a type of research (called "win loss" usually) that aims to answer exactly why the normal customer inquired about a product/service but did not make the purchase. It is very expensive research (since finding the correct person and getting access to them can be difficult) but it does exist and is alive and kicking and included as a line-item in many research budgets.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/27/2011 07:54PM by MickeyB.

I don't want the headache of defining morality, scruples or legalities. If I'm paid for a shop, I won't do the receipt survey. Yes, some MSPs explicitly forbid it, which makes it easy. Others don't. I have no doubt that the client, in no short order, could identify the survey submission, and match it to the shopper. To me, that's an uncomfortable connection.

I do not see any ethical problem with this. I cannot imagine that a MSC could or would hook this to a mystery shopper. What is wrong w/this? We are indeed just customers like any other making observations. We make little enough doing our jobs and should be able to have a few perks.

Actually the could of hooking this together would be easy. You need to enter a code to fill out the survey which is on the receipt you need to submit.

I do see that I might view a location more negatively because of knowing what was on the MS report. Knowing that the person was supposed to do on questions 7, 8, 10 and 11 that they failed to do would be noted in my shop report. There is the potential that I could think more negatively about the service I got than I would if I didn't know that was a requirement.

The people who are answering the surveys were in the location because they chose to walk through the door that day. I am in that location at that time because XYZ mystery shopping told me I had to go there to get a check. The information will be colored by our reason for being there.

I do see it as double dipping.

Well we can agree to disagree. There are plenty of things that other shoppers might do that I feel I cannot or would not do. Let's all support each other. I of course would not do this, if I saw it was specifically prohibited. It is one of those gray areas.

Carol

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/31/2011 06:35AM by 57carol.