This paper will focus on the research aspects. Programmatic organization development as a method will only be dealt with briefly. Measurement by using the Mystery Shopping principle to its utter limits - for the front office - and retrospective self reporting - for the back office - will be described and some results will be presented. Also pitfalls and aspects where research might be improved will be discussed.
Mystery shopper research (or mystery buyer research) is an often underestimated instrument with respect to its various applications. In industries where personal selling is the most important or one of the most important marketing mix variables, MSR can provide the management with a practical tool for control-purposes. It can be used very adequately for evaluating marketing objectives and specific marketing action programmes. MSR for instance can show whether the employee of a travel agency uses its sales tools ( e.g. computerterminal) in the prescribed way and whether he/she follows under certain circumstances the procedures set by central management. Evaluating the performance of the employee c.q. the branch office in an adequate way by questioning customers is quite an impossible task, because it is very difficult to operationalise the standards set by the central management in a questionnaire. There are however some strict rules under which MSR has to take place. This paper will give recommendations for using the instrument MSR and shows some overall results ending with some remarks with respect to the ethics involved. Finally it presents some results of our research about the validity of the instrument and gives a quantitative view on interviewers-bias in MSR.
This paper shows the possibilities of business-to-business-research to outline the business travel market. The Business Travel Monitor, a yearly research project, covering 4000 business-establishments, creates additional ways for market segmentation for suppliers in the business travel market. It offers new entries for marketing-auditing and marketing-planning. Finally an upgrading of the reliability of the data is attained by interviewing two persons per establishment, the business traveller himself and the booker of the business trip.