Issue Eighty

Interview with the CEO of Mercantile Systems Inc.

Mercantile Systems Inc. (MSI) is a privately owned company, headquartered in Brentwood, CA. It was founded, in 1954, by Robert Cosgrove and focused totally on mystery shopping. Today, MSI also offers its clients a multitude of other services, such as compliance audits, sales improvement programs, training seminars, employee theft monitoring and management and much more….

Six Star Solutions

Company Overview: Serving Rocky and Cascade mountain areas of the United States. The origins of this company are in a product and in-store demonstration company that started in Utah in the 1970s. That company serviced clients in the Rocky Mountain states. By the turn of the century, they had noticed an unmet demand for mystery…

10 Ways to Stay Sane as a Mystery Shopper

This is a time-intensive occupation, this mystery shopping thing. I remember in the early days spending hours looking for jobs on a hundred or more job boards, trying to see what I could cobble together into a worthwhile route, then more time sending emails asking for bonuses, then getting on the mapping software and figuring…

Video Shopping: Good Results in the Field

Last month I wrote about tips for preparing for a mystery shopping video shoot. This month’s column gives tips for producing good video and audio once at the shoot. Something elementary but crucial to remember is to get your camera in place and make sure it is on before entering your shop location. If you…