Mystery Shopping - Careers Advice

[Octopus37]

Sorry for the odd title, I could do with a bit of career advice. I'm self-employed at the moment as a mystery shopper/market researcher - mainly work for one company and for a short period until the end of last year was earning about £1,000 before tax (part time). I also work as a mystery shopper for a few other companies. Recently my work has slowed down (projects on hold, although they are finding me some other work), so my salary has pretty much halved. I am also working using aps on my phone for Roamler and Field Agent. I'm wondering what to do going forward, ie whether there are any more secure marketing roles that I could train for with my experience (two years in undercover market research, several years mystery shopping). I am also registered with other field marketing companies and I do work for them occasionally. Would be grateful for any additional ideas sorry for the ramble. I'm wondering about looking into working from home as a Supervisor for my current company (my old Supervisor who has recently left talked to me about his possibility last year). Also wondering if there are any qualifications that might help me to progress further in this field. Any advice would be very much appreciated as I don't really want to change my line of work but need to make considerably more money going forward.

[shoppingpro]

What mystery shopping companys do you work for? I'm signed up with React Surveys and they always have more and more different visits being added. They also do good visits to attractions that I can take my children too, so it doubles as a good day out also. It might be worth signing up with them if you aren't already?

[shabbadooof]

Hiya

I've done mystery Shopping for the last 5 years and while the fees have gone down i've found the number of companies offering work has actually gone up.

There really has been a dynamic shift over to doing the audits on your smartphone though.

Off the top of my head companies I still use

Market Force
Retail Active
Mystery-Shopping.co.uk
edigitalresearch
TNS
EAS
Gapbuster
Grassroots

Then you have the app market as well so you are looking at

Field Agent UK
Roamler
Clic and Walk
StreetSpotr
Streetbees

Basically you want to google for a website in the UK called The Money Shed - That place is dedicated to home working / mystery shopping etc and I get a LOT of information from there!!

Hope this helps

[cakeaddict]

What about being a recruiter for market research agencies? i.e. finding people in your local area that fit a specific profile for bigger agencies to do their research. I have to admit it's not an area I'm that familiar with - but I think it's something you can do as a one-person home working outfit.

In terms of qualifications - there's the MRS (Market Research Society) and you might like to look at an organisation called the ICG (Independent Consultants Group) for inspiration of what other self-employed market research people do.

[alditoharrods]

I've just had this email from Streetspotr, a company that was mentioned above:

We have some final spots for HMV and Muffin Break that must be completed this weekend so we have increase the incentive to £15. The locations are as follows

Muffin Break - Aberdeen, Ashford, Carlisle, Dundee, Livingston.
HMV – Blackpool, Gloucester, Hereford, Llandudno, Swansea, Thanet, Aberdeen, Ayr, Canterbury, Chester, Guernsey, Isle of Man

If you have friends in these areas why not send them the link to the Streetspotr app.streetspotr.com/en and if you cc [email protected] we will make sure we credit your account with 100 extra bonus points as a token of our thanks.

Thanks for all your help in the last few weeks we’ve got some more exciting spots on the way.

[changeychangechangeychange]

There is a business called MUFFIN BREAK? Really?