SPbGASU students’ experience as ‘mystery shoppers’
Since 2013, 3rd-year students studying Economics have participated in the annual Consumer Confidence public competition for the real estate market in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region. This year has been no exception: from 11 to 22 October, 60 students took part in one of the final stages of the competition – the mystery shopping survey.
A tour of the BauHaus apartment complex by the competition experts. From left to right: Galina Tokunova, Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Management at SPbGASU; Valentina Nagiyeva, Executive Director of the competition’s Organizing Committee, General Director of the BSN real estate website; Daniil Kuznetsov, analyst of the Residential Real Estate and Land Development at Colliers, independent partner of the competition; Denis Fadeev, marketing analyst at Bau City Development; Evgeniya Goncharova, managing partner of SETEVIE marketing agency, member of Expert Council of the competition; Olga Romanova, Head of analytics department at GC "Real Estate Bulletin", member of Expert Council; Stanislav Aleksandrov, Deputy General Director of Bau City Development
Valentina Nagiyeva, Executive Director of the Consumer Confidence Organizing Committee, and Oleg Britov, Executive Director of the Union of Construction Associations and Organizations
The Consumer Confidence competition is held on the initiative of the Real Estate Commission of the Consumers’ Association of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region. It aims to improve the quality of work of construction organizations, developers and banks offering real estate servicing.
SPbGASU is a professional partner of the competition, and Galina Tokunova, Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Management and professor at the Department of Management in Construction, is a member of the Organizing Committee and Expert Council. Her task is to assess residential properties under construction and those already completed, including transport accessibility, quality of design and construction, and developer compliance with their obligations. The competition was held in two stages. From 10 May to 19 September, the online voting was organized, which enabled to determine the finalists. The second round took place from 5 October to 12 November and included research by the mystery shopping method, tours of residential complexes, and analysis of the tender documentation. On 12 November, the finalists made presentations at the Expert Council meeting hosted by Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering.
The organizers decided to increase the number of participants in the mystery shopper survey in order to get a more objective picture. In this connection, starting from this year participation in the competition has become a compulsory part of the Marketing course for our students of Economics. From the university's point of view, practice-oriented learning plays an important role in the development of students' professional competencies.
Valentina Shestakova, Head of Public Relations at Real Estate Commission of the Consumers' Association of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region
Before starting the work, participants received training in mystery shopping: as part of their study course in Marketing, they attended Galina Tokunova’s lectures on market research methods, then tried applying them during practical classes with Olga Bochkaryova, senior lecturer at the Department of Management in Construction, as well as received instructions from the competition organizers. Valentina Nagiyeva, Executive Director of the Organizing Committee and General Director of BSN.ru, informed the participants about the public significance of the competition, its goals and objectives. Valentina Shestakova, PR manager of the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region Consumer Association's Real Estate Commission, described the methods developed for the contest and told about the main points to be taken into consideration when assessing the contestants.
Participants had to assess the company’s website and client-friendliness as a result of a face-to-face visit to the office.
Evaluation criteria for company websites included the completeness of information, such as the information about the construction project (for a construction company) or mortgage loan terms (for a bank), accessibility and usability of search options, compliance of the website content with the information obtained in the office.
During the visit, the researchers had to pay attention to how customer service was organized, how the company's employees behaved when talking to the mystery shopper and how the customer's issue was resolved.
Roman Kozakov, Pirmuhammet Ovezov, Ripsime Barseghyan
Participants shared their views on working as mystery shoppers:
Roman Kozakov: "As a practising researcher, first and foremost I checked the professionalism and organization of the workspace. It was important to assess how competent and well-mannered the employees are, how able they are to promote the company sales, whether they know how to find an approach to people who have no idea about the nuances of this or that type of economic activity. The workplace must create a comfortable environment not only for customers but also for the employees. One of the things I have noticed during several years of research is that company management is often overly frugal – it is indeed a problem that needs to be dealt with. Its first indications are the lack of adequate sanitary facilities and recreational areas, poorly equipped workplaces, uncomfortable temperature and humidity conditions in the offices and so on. In other respects, it is obvious that they will not have any problems with documentation, and efficient website building is already common practice, so it is more important to assess the human factor, not the business cards".
Pirmukhammet Ovezov: "I approached the work from the position of a foreigner, which I think fully revealed the employees' attitude to this category of clients. This invaluable experience helped me form an opinion about the work of the company staff, the functioning of websites and about the approaches to work in this field in general".
Ripsime Barseghyan: "I have learned a lot about buying and selling real estate".
Margarita Voronova: "First of all, I got acquainted with the company website, paying attention to the ease of site navigation, whether all the necessary information was presented, its general usability and whether there was any additional useful information. When evaluating the office, I paid attention to the appearance of both the premises and the staff, their politeness, their willingness to answer questions, as well as the details of the contract provided and the way the employee answered questions about the contract terms and conducted the dialogue on the whole".
Aleksandr Konstantinov: "It is not just an experience in appraising flats and documents, but also in communicating with consultants. All this will come in handy in the future when actually buying a property".
Ekaterina Bugaeva: "Being a mystery shopper gave me experience in research surveys. It was interesting to learn everything about buying flats, to analyze the company and its offers".
Darya Isayenko: "I gained experience in evaluating the organization’s activities. Besides, during the preparation I had studied materials related to the economic area of the company I was researching".
Most of the students who took part in the research assessed the level of explored companies’ customer orientation as good or excellent, paying attention to the professionalism of the staff, and were fully satisfied with the consultations they received. All of the mystery shoppers liked the companies' websites. It should be noted that only five or six years ago it was not uncommon to receive negative comments, even regarding the leaders on the real estate market. The improvements suggest that the competition is achieving its aim, making the players in this market more responsible and attentive to customers’ needs.
✔ The final stage of the 14th Consumer Confidence competition was a meeting of the Expert Council, which heard the results of the mystery shoppers' work. The experts assessed compliance with legislation and principles of business ethics, terms of fulfilment of contractual obligations, absence or presence of claims to the quality of services, absence or presence of prescriptions from supervisory and controlling authorities, correctness of advertising about companies' activities, their information transparency. This year's competition results will be announced on January 21. The winners will receive the Consumer Confidence label.
Text: Tatyana Petrova
Photos: 1–3 courtesy of the Organizing Committee, 4–6 provided by the students
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