Each OshKosh outlet is shopped twice a quarter. With that schedule, Ms. Brekke says, the company gets a good feel for the environment in each of its 140 outlets. In addition to monitoring customer service, one of the greatest values that can be derived from mystery shopping audits is observing the competition. Information gathered can be instrumental in benchmarking threats from competitors or identifying outlets in other industry sectors which might provide a performance standard. Mystery shoppers can compare prices and check on new products and product lines in addition to verifying customer service.
Some retailer use the information to recruit staff.
In some cases, vendors may use mystery shoppers to assess the effectiveness of representatives selling their products. Cost and Reliability Mystery shopping is generally considered an inexpensive evaluation tool. Some advocates have gone so far as to say the program can be self funding if it can drive improvement in associates' success in upselling the customer. The reliability of mystery shopping data is much higher than that of customer surveys, when the data are used for the same problem of scaling outlets. Reliability is greater when evaluating a more objective performance concept such as store environment than it is in a more subjective concept such as service quality.