Social Media and Mystery shopping

http://www.iaeme.com/IJMET/index.asp 181 editor@iaeme.com
International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Technology (IJMET)
Volume 9, Issue 1, January 2018, pp. 181–189, Article ID: IJMET_09_01_022
Available online at http://www.iaeme.com/IJMET/issues.asp?JType=IJMET&VType=9&IType=1
ISSN Print: 0976-6340 and ISSN Online: 0976-6359
© IAEME Publication Scopus Indexed
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING AND GHOST
SHOPPING APPROACH; A NEW BUSINESS
TOOL
Anand Shankar Raja M
Assistant Professor, Department of Commerce,
Christ (Deemed to be university), Bengaluru, India
Preethi Sarah JP
Post Graduate Scholar, Christ (Deemed to be University), Bangaluru, India.
ABSTRACT
Research motivation: The researcher is a mystery shopper who has vast
experience in various field analyses. The researcher has taken up a few good
assignments in various domains, which has given him a good experience. Thus, this
experience has motivated the researcher to explore how mystery shopping is used in
social media and how the process works in reality. The connectivity between mystery
shopping and social media is a new emerging topic and only a very few research work
is seen and hence this gap has been used to proceed with this research title.
Research materials and methods: The research work makes use of quantitative
and qualitative techniques to draw and analyse the data. The respondents for this
research work is mystery shoppers, market research agencies, experts in marketing
research and mystery shopping, a few marketers who deal with digital marketing etc.
The tool used for this research is factor analysis for quantitative analysis and various
qualitative techniques to determine the experience, observations, past case studies and
literature works.
Research outcome: From the quantitative techniques, it is clear that customer
experience and relationship between the sales representatives and the customers
dealing through online marketing plays an important role in the success of social
media marketing which the mystery shoppers observe. Based on the observations a
detailed report is submitted which will enhance the firms to form strong strategies.
Future scope: The future researchers can analyse on the related aspects of
mystery shopping and social media. The problems faced by mystery shoppers with
regard to social media observations, the skills needed to deal with digital tools can be
researched.
Keywords: Mystery shopping, social media marketing, observational techniques,
quantitative and qualitative techniques.

Social Media Marketing and Ghost Shopping Approach; A New Business Tool
Cite this Article: Anand Shankar Raja M and Preethi Sarah JP, Social Media
Marketing and Ghost Shopping Approach; A New Business Tool, International
Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Technology 9(1), 2018, pp. 181–189.
http://www.iaeme.com/IJMET/issues.asp?JType=IJMET&VType=9&IType=1
1. INTRODUCTION
Social media marketing helps the customers identify the benefits in a product or a service to
match with personal interest or desire by creating a demand. Social marketing concept
especially in today’s world plays an important role where technology is being infused. India
being one of the countries with good resources is going to experience 5G in the next few
years, thus social media and marketing always hold a very strong relationship and help for the
survival of each other. Social media marketing is also used to promote services and to gain
brand loyalty. Various strategies and goals of the firm have to be balanced to be quite
successful in social media marketing. The concept of innovation cannot be restricted in the
case of social media marketing as innovations are increasing day by day and keeping social
media marketing ever fresh. The marketers need to ensure the message being correctly passed
to the final customers to have a good reach, which will indirectly contribute to the profits of
the firm. Social media marketing is a new buzzword to defeat the competitors who advertise
on a continuous time span about the products and services and ensure it reminds in the minds
of the consumer. Grab new customers before the competitors grab is them, because scaling
pinnacles of success amongst the tough competition is not an easy task. Social media
marketing also stays strong as a feedback mechanism, which is available to all consumers.
Thus, the marketer collects certain data is which will be further analysed before implementing
any new strategies.
The famous American pizza restaurant chain “Domino’s has become quite successful by
running a cleaver campaign in United Kingdom in twitter which provoked the interest of
many. Social media marketing is also a cheap setup, which covers mass audience. The
concept of social marketing also makes the consumers feel that they are always connected
with the marketers due to the continuous advertisements and the popup’s of the same
advertisements in various social media platforms. Various marketers have launched food
applications and have made it easy for the consumers to order food and to track the same.
Building a new application or an online-based system is not an easy task it takes many years
together to go live and to stay successful satisfying the needs and desires of the consumers.
Social media marketing also helps the marketers to understand their strengths and weakness
from the consumers.
McDonalds campaign to encourage consumers to share their best experience with them in
twitter was a mass hit. These ideas and experience shared by the consumers and target
consumers, will be drafted into a strong strategy and implemented for the success of the firm
indirectly increasing the profitability position of the firm. Thus, marketers are very smart to
make the best use of social media marketing for scaling the pinnacles of success. Today’s
social media marketing has taken various forms such as social media websites, blog sharing
and establishments, microblogs, photo sharing, product comparison platforms, review and
comments for products and services, social gaming, video sharing and social book marking.
The study follows a multiple case study approach as it has too many variables to be
explained. Certain decisions concerned with consumers cannot be quantified and hence the
casual link between consumers purchase, behaviour, problems with social media is observed
using ghost shoppers’ and the same is used to develop the case and hence this research
follows an explanatory case study method. This new assumption zone with regard to mystery
shopping and social media marketing draws data from various sources and hence it is

Anand Shankar Raja M and Preethi Sarah JP
important to check the validity of the information. Thus, multiple data, which is collected for
this research, is checked using a triangulation approach in research as mentioned by a few
researchers on the importance and use of triangulation in research, Angen, MJ. (2000),
Creswell, JW. (1998). Denzin, NK. (1978), Lincoln, YS. & Guba, EG. (1985), Mays, N. &
Pope, C. (2000), Patton, MQ. (1999), Patton, MQ. (2001).The power of individual
customers is keeping the marketers to active in formation of various attractive strategies. An
article published by “Customers perspective” on July 11th
2011, clearly stated that mystery
shopping is used in social media marketing to know the customer experience, customer
shopping behaviour and loyalty, analysis from data extracted from social media websites etc.
On 4th
December 2015 an article published by ICEF monitor on entitled “Mystery shopping
experiment on social media: Is there anybody out there” conducted a research using mystery
shopping experience using international students in selected countries such as Canada, US,
Australia etc. to know about the institutions response which has posed about their products
and services on Facebook and twitter. The study concluded stating that, the response received
by the international students was not up to the expected level but a few institutions responded
in a sportive and healthy way, which attracted the customers. Thus, mystery shopping is a
strong tool to analyse customer and sales staff interactions. Floor walk blog during July 2017
states the importance of social media communication and its importance. Communication in
social media domain plays an important role to enhance the profits. Companies are now using
mystery shopping to determine marketing communication and there are many job
opportunities for new mystery shoppers. David Rich, President & CEO of ICC/Decision
Services, spoke about “The Future of Social Media in Mystery Shopping” on September 9th
2011 in which he mentioned, the importance of ghost shopping in social media for various
uses such as gaining new clients, keeping the existing clients satisfied and search engine
optimization. Shankar et al during the year 2011 conducted a research has has stated that
retailers increase awareness about their business, product, service and overall brand through
social media websites by engaging with customers. “As more shoppers are using social
media (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn) and rely on them for marketing
shopping decisions, promotion through these media has become important” (Shankar et al.
2011, 32). Sorescue et al. (2011), very clearly in his research has stated that social media
should not be used only for advertising and promotion but should also be a good platform o
communicate with the consumers and to build a good network.
MYSTERY SHOPPING AN OVERVIEW
(Wilson, 1998)Explored the service destination using mystery shopping and clearly
mentioned that, mystery shopping is a very suitable tool to be used in the service domain such
as financial institutions, hospitals, educational institutions, travel agencies etc. Adding to this
theme, (D.N, 2001), says that the tourism industry can be well-explored using mystery
shopping. The researcher has used a case study method to explore how mystery shopping
works in tourism industry. The research work in the field of Georgia’s local government was
analysed in detail by researchers, which clearly explains that this tool “mystery shopping” can
be used even in the public sector. (Myers, 2011) Says that this tool ghost shopping is growing
in leaps, bounds, and being used in the service industry to manage and evaluate the customer
experience. Thus from all the reviews and key definitions for mystery shopping it is known
that ghost shopping has become a common marketing research tool being used in all the
fields. Thus taking into consideration the essence of this tool, in this research it is used in par
with social media marketing.
STATEMENT OF OBJECTIVES

This professional paper, which concentrates on qualitative approach and quantitative approach
to explore the social media marketing using mystery shoppers, has two objectives. The first
objective of this research is to check how and in what ways mystery shoppers can be used for
social media marketing evaluation process. Second aim is to study mystery-shopping process
in detail in par with social media marketing to understand the methodology and various
qualitative approaches being used in it. The study also aims to recommend a few rules, which
could be used by the retailers and marketers to be successful in social media marketing.
2. MATERIALS AND METHODS
Social media marketing has become quite popular in the latest digital world, at the same time
the top management also uses active mystery shoppers to know what is happening in the
social media and to check if consumers are facing any problems with the firm’s business
clients or sales representatives. Thus, the role of mystery shoppers, which was once seen only
in the field area and retail stores, has now transformed to social media platforms also. To first
understand the complex phenomena present in social media marketing, to develop a new
conceptual model by taking into account social media as one aspect and mystery shopping as
the other aspect and to see how mystery shopping methodology can contribute for the success
of social media marketing. Interventions between social media and mystery shopping (factors
which connects both the concepts), a qualitative case study method has been used in this
study. The initial step to be followed in a qualitative case study approach is formulation of
research questions and the research questions for this study are 1. Will mystery shopping be a
useful tool to assess the happenings in social media campaign for better marketing, 2. Will
social media marketing boost up the morale of the customers, 3. What will be the various
problems faces by the customers due to social media marketing, 4. Are the marketers taking
corrective actions to solve the issues due to social media marketing, 5. What is consumers’
mentality towards social media marketing, 6. “Social media marketing exploiting the
consumers” viewpoints of the consumers. The time and activity in this research is restricted
only to two variables i.e. mystery shopping methodology and social media marketing and
hence this is the study limitation.
DATA COLLECTION METHOD
Explanatory
approach
There are certain interventions that are too complex for the researchers to collect
the data and hence, to find the casual link between factors influencing social
media marketing using mystery shopping observation. Even the problems faced
by the customers through social media marketing is also observed using ghost
shopping.
Descriptive approach
The present situation or a few important phenomena, which has occurred in the
domain of social media marketing, has to be described through understanding
from the review of literature. For this, a few case studies has been taken into
consideration.
Multiple case study
approach
For the multiple case study approach, the data has been collected from various
persons connected with social media marketing. Marketers, consumers, website
designers, brand managers, market research firms and mystery shoppers have
been asked a few questions and based on the response the data is validated and
discussed.
Intrinsic approach
It is important to take into consideration the inner interest of the researcher,
which has been the motivation and driving force for this research progress.
Thus, the researcher being a mystery shopper his experience is also narrated in
this approach.

3. TRIANGULATION APPROACH
The aim of triangulation in research is to cross check and validate the collected data and it is a
form of verification of information. Triangulation also provides data credibility and rationality
in research. It is clearly mentioned in the methodology that, a multiple methods have been
employed to collect the data to proceed with qualitative case study approach and hence it is
important to use the triangulation effect. Since the research deals with qualitative aspects,
certain feedbacks form the web sources have also been considered for discussion. Retailers
concentrate well when it comes to social media because it delivers a key component that
businesses have struggled to collect for years: feedback says (Gonzalez 2010).
DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION
Although case study has been considered one of the controversial approaches to collect data,
it has been considered to be widely used in social sciences where behaviour and related issues
are studied. A holistic method is employed to collect the data and to involve in deep
investigation says Gulsecen & Kubat, 2006, Johnson, 2006. A few researchers have stated
clearly that case study method goes beyond quantitative methods and covers wide data which
will be usually be omitted during a statistical analysis says Taylor & Berridge, 2006. Here
the real life context with regard to mystery shoppers experience is being explored and hence it
an empirical inquiry says Yin (1984:23).McDonough and McDonough, 1997), mentions
about the case study strategies and the protocols which has to be followed and thus before the
analysis, it is important to mention the protocols taken into account for this research.
4. QUANTITATIVE TECHNIQUE USED FOR DATA ANALYSIS
Since the research works on the triangulation approach, it is important to check the collected
primary data from mystery shoppers through the market research agencies on their
observations on social media marketing. The collected data is exposed to a factor analysis and
interpretations are drawn based on the results. The interpreted results will be checked with the
results, which were drawn using other approaches to validate the triangulation effect. The
factor analysis made use of 30 question statements, which were asked, to the mystery
shoppers on social media and other factors related to it.
It is always important to determine the internal consistency of the questionnaire, which
has been used in the research to collect the data from the respondents. The main aim of using
the reliability test is to know how far the questionnaire scales in the questionnaire is perfect
for the respondents to respond. Thus, a Cronbach’s alpha test for reliability has been used and
the results show a positive value of .7 and above which is well accepted. The sample
adequacy test has also been tested using the KMO. A principal Component Analysis has been
used to reduce the factors based on common criteria and those factors with less extraction
values had been removed. The factors have been rotated and have been classified based on
eight iterations, which has been given a common name based on the common link between
variables.
FACTOR ANALYSIS
If data is ordinal or nominal, there is no need to use the test of normality to choose the
statistical analysis. It is very easy to observe certain aspects and based on observation the
researcher can prioritise the most suitable variable. Thus for this research, factor analysis has
been used.

Scale 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Customer and staff interaction .876
Relationship maintenance .857
Website arrangement .719
Description of products and services .660
Problem solving mechanism 8.33
Frequency of requests accepted by the
staff
8.34
Patience and friendliness .585
Clarity on information .471
Product and service knowledge .579
Communication style .515
Convincing mechanism .456
Customer satisfaction .567
Customer loyalty .675
Customer experience .678
Determination of latest trend .654
feed-back .764
Customer expectations .345
DISCUSSION
From the above analysis, it is clear that, mystery shoppers observe various components in the
social media and prepare a detailed report, which is submitted to the top management. The top
management makes the best use of the report to form strong strategies, which will help the
business to grow and sustain in the market as a market leader. Factor 1 is named as
observation on CRM practices, Factor 2 is named as website and appearance criteria,
Factor 3 is named as enquiry and problem solving mechanism, Factor 4 is named as Trust
and friendliness, Factor 5 is named as mode of communication, Factor 6 and 7 is named as
customer experience, Factor 8 is named as feedback analysis. Thus using statistical
approach these are the variables which has been derived.
5. QUALITATIVE APPROACH FOR DATA ANALYSIS
The research concludes stating that, qualitative approaches dealing with sharing experiences,
personal experiences, observational techniques, and various narrated literature works, casual
relationship observed from conversation portrays the reality in a better way. But with regard
to quantitative techniques, the research confines the conclusion based on the results derived
from the statistical analysis but helps to discuss the exact outcomes without considering the
experience of the respondents. This gap has been filled through qualitative approach. The
mystery shopping experience, which was shared, by most of the mystery shoppers spoke
about a few factors, which were also the same, which has been derived from the statistical
analysis. From the experience, it is clear that, customer loyalty, satisfaction level, honesty,
promise are all the factors, which influence the consumers. The same was also mentioned by
most of the researchers in the review of literature, thus, the triangulation approach is true and
satisfied. Refer annexure at the end of the paper for more clarity on experience shared by
various respondents. Chi (2011)defines social media marketing as a “linking between brands
and consumers thus social media plays an important role in customer brand enhancement.
Very fast growth in digital media and busy personal life motivates the consumers to
completely shift to online purchase where social media plays a dominating role and hence it is

the duty of the business houses to well plan the social media marketing. This idea was also
clearly stated by Faulds (2009) stating that businesses must learn how to use social media in a
way that is consistent with their business plan (Mangold and Faulds 2099).Kaplan and
Haenlein (2010, 61) define social media as “a group of Internet grounded applications that
motivates the consumers to use online portals to get involved in consumer purchases. Thus all
these approaches with regard to brand enhancement, active purchase action, quality factors
which enhances a firms webpage has to be clearly analysed using mystery shoppers.
6. CONCLUSION
Mystery shoppers used as silent spy agents both internally and externally can be one of the
very best mechanisms for business improvement. Social media marketers take efforts to
promote their products using various social media platforms but they can’t check the customer
experience directly and hence employ mystery shoppers. There are certain situations where
the employees of the firm might not strike a good conversation with the employees or may not
take efforts to keep the social media platform updated with the latest product or service
information. These mistakes will be identified by the ghost shoppers and reported to the top
management. Thus, the management can take exact and accurate decisions based on mystery
shoppers report. Mystery shoppers observe various domains using their cognitive intelligence
and convert the observation into written records through a narrated approach and hence this
report covers most of the aspects which is needed for strategic decisions. The marketers can
make the best use of ghost shopping for better business growth and enhancement.
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Experience of a mystery shopper being narrated
Well! I had an opportunity to observe the interactive conversation between the customer and
the sales representative who takes care of the enquiry management with new product orders. I
observed that the products described by the customer, whom he saw in Facebook
advertisement, were not matching with what was explained by the sales representative. It
differs almost 70% in terms of quality, quantity, price, features etc. In addition, it was
repeated by the sales representative that unavailability of the stock. The customer asked about
the availability of the product and the sales representative that it might be available or the
customer has to choose a different one gave a very negative reply.
Note: This is one of the examples where the mystery shopper has narrated the same,
which has taken place between a sales representative and a normal customer. Based on this
conversation a detailed report will be submitted to the top management with detailed
information on call time, enquiry about the nature of product, sales representatives name and
employee number etc. Likewise, various other experience and observations will be taken into
consideration for the qualitative analysis.
Conversation with a marketing manager
It is the duty of the sales representatives to render the full information about the products and
services to our customers when they are in need of any information. Sometimes it becomes
very difficult for us to track individual behaviour of employees employed in our firm dealing
with marketing communication or social media interaction and hence we use spy shoppers to
conduct an internal fiend work. These spy agents who are appointed by the market researchers
submit a detailed report to us and it helps us to take strong decisions. Sometimes we even
remove the employee from the work based on the mystery shopping results.
Note: This conversation is one example from a marketing manager explaining the entire
process on how social media marketing and mystery shopping technique are combined for a
cause. The manager also mentions clearly on how decisions are taken by them using ghost-
shopping technique.

Social Media and Mystery shopping

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