Shopper Mystery Not Mystery Shopper

Many of you are familiar with the concept of “mystery shopper”.  Consumer groups, marketing organizations, and most retail corporations hire people who are chosen to shop at a particular store then rate things such as products, store cleanliness, friendliness or customer service overall.  Over the last 50 years or so mystery shoppers have been composed of women (because they spend the most dollars) and let’s face facts here, back in the day housekeeper was believed to be the only job a woman should have.  Of course, most of that nonsense has changed (although not all of it), and men make up some of the mystery shoppers of today.  You can be compensated in cash or discounts or even free products for your valuable time as an unknown customer.

In the world’s biggest super discount, monopolistic store in my home area (the one that used to be dotted by smiling faces) they have developed a new program—the shopper mystery.  This spin on an old tradition includes changing the aisles of inventory every week in order to totally confuse the customer to the point where head-scratching and puzzled looks dot the shopping horizon.  According to the store managers, it is an effort to better understand the needs and habits of the shopper and provide a better experience.  I can help them with this dilemma, what the shopper truly needs is merchandise that can be found in the spot where it was a week ago and the habit is to get what you need and get the hell out.  “Hey, where is the peanut butter?”  “It’s located in the former men’s underwear section”.  That would have been my next guess.

I kid you not, every week this store has been completely reorganized, rearranged and recomposed.  In the case of this store, with each reshuffle, the store’s aesthetic quality diminishes as the shelves and displays began to resemble a military warehouse that is used to store out-of-date rations, guess that reflects our shopping needs and habits.  There have been a couple of times when I have had to double-check the name on the door to make sure that I am in the right place. You might recall in previous postings that ole Grumpy has a “get in and get out strategy” where any kind of shopping (excepting bookstores) is concerned.  So, adding extra time to my shopping day by virtue of playing hide and go seek with the shelves of products is something that makes me want to boil the company executives in their own artificial cooking oil.

It occurs to me that this effort to constantly increase sales and dare I say it—profits may be having the complete opposite effect when shoppers finally give up in disgust and do not buy the same amount of processed food products that they might normally.  For most folks (especially males) shopping requires a certain preparation of mood, for me it resembles the locker room of a football team who is in search of its first win in ten years.  Once you have finished psyching yourself up with blood-curdling screams and beating your head against the locker room soda machine you storm out like a first division marine unit looking to take the hill.

Then you arrive at that monstrous and monopolistic corporate discount store only to find that everything has been rearranged and the game changes to that of a mouse looking for cheese in a maze.  Wouldn’t it be just as easy to ask customers what they prefer instead of subjecting them to a retail Rorschach test?   All of this has become similar to something out of a 1960s sci-fi movie where the evil scientist is observing you through a two-way mirror after you are given a bag of widgets.  I can envision the people watching you on camera in their white lab coats, holding clipboards.  When did customers become lab rats anyway?

The object of shopping for most customers (especially when grocery shopping) is simply a matter of satisfying wants and needs with the purchase of products meant to satisfy those wants and needs.  Most of us do not go to the store with the intent of snipe hunting or participating in a scavenger adventure.  Imagine if auto dealers switched the location of each car on a daily basis just to throw their potential customer off base.  The art of customer service use to mean making the customer happy, now they do the complete opposite under the guise of a better experience.  Maybe they could make a new reality tv show where a celebrity family has to find the same product, at the same store, on a different week.  They could call it the real shoppers of Beverly Hills.

The truth here is that people are not spending as much money at stores and our capitalist-driven oligarchy has to find new ways of raking in more of that beloved cash.  Today our stores have become “supercenters” and “mega marts” where they cram as many products in them as space will allow and hope to be your one-stop-shop.  As the number of products increases their space decreases and none of these oligarchic wizards want to invest in new construction, so they cram inventory into place like pieces of a puzzle.  And then to assure themselves the layout works, they conduct research as if they hope to cure some wasting disease.  Marketing research has become a psychological construct for studying human behavior.  Remember when it was just shopping?

Even in the 1970s and 80s when the malls were the in thing, it was very entertaining to walk the gauntlet of unique stores that filled its walls.  At least the malls had some architectural style and personality.  Today, every type of product is crammed under one ginormous utility shed with all the charm of an airplane hangar.  For me, nothing will ever replace the old downtown stores where you felt like you were visiting old friends, and everything was always in the same place.  As always, it’s just my opinion.

Talk to Ya Later

The Grumpy Old Fart Customer @2020 All rights Reserved