TY  - JOUR
U1  - Zeitschriftenartikel, wissenschaftlich - begutachtet (reviewed)
A1  - Blessing, Gerald
A1  - Natter, Martin
T1  - Do mystery shoppers really predict customer satisfaction and sales performance?
JF  - Journal of retailing
N2  - Mystery shopping (MS) is a widely used tool to monitor the quality of service and personal selling. In consultative retail settings, assessments of mystery shoppers are supposed to capture the most relevant aspects of sales people’s service and sales behavior. Given the important conclusions drawn by managers from MS results, the standard assumption seems to be that assessments of mystery shoppers are strongly related to customer satisfaction and sales performance. However, surprisingly scant empirical evidence supports this assumption. We test the relationship between MS assessments and customer evaluations and sales performance with large-scale data from three service retail chains. Surprisingly, we do not find asubstantial correlation. The results show that mystery shoppers are not good proxies for real customers. While MS assessments are not related to sales, our findings confirm the established correlation between customer satisfaction measurements and sales results.
KW  - mystery shopping
KW  - personal selling
KW  - sales management
KW  - customer satisfaction
Y1  - 2019
UN  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:rt2-opus4-24513
SN  - 0022-4359
SS  - 0022-4359
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretai.2019.04.001
DO  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretai.2019.04.001
VL  - 95
IS  - 3
SP  - 47
EP  - 62
S1  - 16
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - New York, NY
ER  -