Project 2a: Mystery Shopper

Josh Smith, a senior at Oral Roberts University, participated in a Mystery Shopper experiment at Target. He and his wife visited the store and found it to be clean and well-maintained. However, they were not acknowledged by an associate within 30 seconds of entering the store. They sought assistance from a young associate who was polite, knowledgeable, and went out of his way to help them find a specific Funko Pop collectible. The associate also wished them a good day and said "God bless." At the checkout counter, they had a pleasant interaction with a friendly older lady. Overall, Josh was pleased with the appearance of the store, the behavior of the associates, and the efficiency of their visit. Hello, my name is Josh Smith, I am a senior here at Oral Roberts, and this is my audio report for the Mystery Shopper experiment. Saturday night, my wife and I went to Target up near our house here in Flushing, Ohio, and spent the evening just strolling around, following the instructions, and seeing what all we could figure out about this. This was an interesting project from my standpoint because, you know, a lot of times we just get in and get out of the store, but we don't actually think about these kinds of things, so I thoroughly enjoyed actually doing this project, and my wife had fun doing it with me. But when we arrived at Target, it was about 6.30 on a Saturday, or Saturday, last night around, well I shouldn't say Saturday, well last night was Saturday, so around 6.30 last night, Saturday after, in the parking lot, to our knowledge, or from what we could tell was very clean, and we had some snow here in Ohio, so there was snow covered, but it was still plowed, that I didn't feel like my car was going to slide all over God's green earth trying to get in or out of the parking lot. Also, the store was very clean and well maintained. The one thing that did shock me though, when we first walked in, was, I noticed the first question that never thinks, you never think about, but were you acknowledged by an associate within 30 seconds of entering the store, and I can honestly say we were not. There were, right there when you walk into our Target, there's the customer help, and they were all smiling, and you know, waved, but we didn't get that hello, what are you looking for, like I think of Best Buy in that situation, where when you walk into a Best Buy, you know, there's always someone that greets you, at least at ours here in Ohio, or my part of Ohio, of oh hi, what are you looking for, what can, you know, how can we help you today, but I was kind of shocked that we weren't greeted. Also, my wife and I, we went also to look for, well we like to collect those little collectible Funko Pops, so we started looking around, and she knew what she wanted, but I wanted to dig deeper into this, so we found an associate to ask for help, and the poor gentleman couldn't have been much out of high school, if not in still high school, and I say that because I'm about to be 30 this year, and these kids just keep getting younger and younger on me, but he was very polite, smiled the whole time, good eye contact, was very talkative, I would say he went out of his way to help us, we were looking for, it was one of those little Disney 100 Funko Pops, she collects the high school musical ones, so we went into detail about what we wanted, and the one we were looking for, and the one she was looking for specifically, was the Vanessa Huston's little one, I mean they're cute and all, but we gave it to the guy, and he was very, I was very impressed, he knew his stuff, and was very honest, and he goes, oh here look, we have some of these too, and showed her some of the other ones, like I think she found Sharpay last night as well, and I forget the other ones she found, but I was very impressed with his knowledge of the product, and his politeness, and his eye contact, because in today's society in general, I was always taught growing up, eye contact is huge, and you just don't see a lot of it, where they're short with you, I've had experiences where the representative or associate is short with you, and just wants to get the experience over, so they tell you what you want to hear, and move you along, the other thing that really impressed me with this associate, is that once we were done, and headed out to the checkout counter, that he told us, you know, have a good day, and God bless, and you know, being from small town Ohio, it's, you know, we're very conservative around here, so you hear it, but in today's America, you know, you tell somebody to have God bless, and you kind of have to be cautious about saying it, because you just don't know how people are going to take that, and when we got to the cash register it was an older lady, and when I say older, I, you know, she's probably in her 40s or 50s, a little old lady, not old, I guess, it's not old, I can't say it's old, but she was very polite, asked how we were doing, where we were from, chatted us up, the whole interaction itself, I wanted to say, lasted, oh gosh, 30 seconds to a minute, I mean, she was quick, we just had a couple items, but we talked more than the whole experience took itself, so overall, I was very pleased with how my target looked, how the associates acted, and the time to get in and out, now it wasn't a busy hour, weirdly, but that could have been from the weather, so God bless, and have a great day, thank you for listening, bye bye now.