TrendSource Trending Blog

Market Research 101 continues this week with an in-depth exploration of competitor monitoring mystery shops. Sure, competitor monitoring mystery shops are a little bit like spying, but it’s also just really good business and everybody else is doing it.

Market Research 101 continues this week with customer experience mystery shops, a market research methodology near and dear to TrendSource’s heart. We love mystery shopping, it’s how we got our start in the market research business, so let’s learn all there is to learn about customer experience mystery shops, and we will try not to date ourselves as we hum ‘Building a Mystery.’

In southern California, we are roasting right now—hundred degree afternoons, fire warnings all around us, you know, your typical mid-September weather for the greater-Los Angeles area. But maybe all that heat is coming out of our market research oven. That’s right, it’s time to keep it going with Market Research 101.

Fraud is just one of those unfun facts of life like taxes and in-laws. It is everywhere, of course, and the mystery shopping industry is no exception. 

Indeed, we’ve seen a new wave of fraud and scams plaguing the mystery shopping industry. Crooks are once again using the TrendSource  name (and even our Director’s signature!) to defraud potential mystery shoppers. They send a letter via priority mail on letterhead looking surprisingly similar (but not identical) to ours, outlining instructions for depositing a (bogus) check and then wiring money back to the sender.

Though it’s tempting to make her the butt of every joke, Kim Kardashian-West just added a potentially very large asset to her extensive portfolio. She is now serves as an advisor to, and spokesperson for, ScreenShop, a fashion shopping app that, when all is said and done, may prove to be the rare case in which an In Style headline was not chock-full of hyperbole: “Kim Kardashian-West’s new fashion app will change how you shop,” the mag declared.