The Dimensions of Mystery Shopping Program (DMSP) - Checklist Construction

The purpose of this study is to develop a checklist (yardstick) which can be used widely across various industries employing mystery shoppers. This research paper focuses on the development of a checklist instrument after a detailed critical review of various theories, concepts and themes associated with mystery shopping. Mystery shopping is being used in many industries such as banking and insurance, Retail and marketing, Government department, entertainment etc., and hence a common yardstick has to be framed which could be used to measure the outcome of mystery shopping assignments. Thus, the research motivation is to construct a checklist for mystery shoppers to evaluate the mystery shopping field work. Selected research articles were taken to critically analyze the theme of mystery shopping. Rigorous efforts had been taken to understand the usage of mystery shopping in various industries to form a common pool of statements which forms the “The Dimensions of Mystery Shopping Program” (DMSP-checklist construction). To ensure the relevance of a common checklist which can be used across various industries, detailed explanation on how the variables had been selected has been explained. Qualitative software named Dedoose, which is now very popular in Social Science, has been used to find the most promising variables. The study concludes that measuring the customers shopping experience is more important for a mystery shopping filed work considering three important variables to be seen in checklist such as: product knowledge, service & customer experience.