ABCNews -- Many people have heard of mystery shopping, but not all of us understand exactly what it's really about.
Mystery shopping is focused on monitoring and improving service quality to ensure consistency with brand standards using anonymous resources. A growing trend involves home-based mystery shoppers who conduct their work by calling (as opposed to visiting) catalog companies, call centers and others, which accounts for 15 percent of the industry, according to trade group Mystery Shopping Providers Association (http://www.mysteryshop.org/).
With mystery shopping, an individual walks into a retail, grocery or convenience store, a restaurant, or a gas station to measure specific behaviors and make certain observations. Among them:...