Open Access

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.

Prior to the introduction of AI-based forecast models in the procurement department of an industrial retail company, we assessed the digital skills of the procurement employees and surveyed their attitudes toward a new digital technology. The aim of the survey was to ascertain important contextual factors which are likely to influence the acceptance and the successful use of the new forecast tool. What we find is that the digital skills of the employees show an intermediate level and that their attitudes toward key aspects of new digital technologies are largely positive. Thus, the conditions for high acceptance and the successful use of the models are good, as evidenced by the high intention of the procurement staff to use the models. In line with previous research, we find that the perceived usefulness of a new technology and the perceived ease of use are significant drivers of the willingness to use the new forecast tool.