The demand for ‘secret shoppers,’ those hardy souls who brave supermarket sales staff  to check out customer service standards, is expanding outside its traditional markets.


In Western Australia Shopper Anonymous is now carrying out ‘mystery shopping’ in hotels, banks, restaurants, newspapers and telecoms companies. It seems the hard lessons learned in food retailing are equally applicable in other competitive sectors as they fight for market share.


Does this mean we could see more food led initiatives being adopted in other industries, full ingredient listings on cars, sell by dates on financial services, or cleanliness standards on public transport? One day….one day.