What are Paid Surveys?

Answer:

Paid surveys are performed by various market research firms. Large companies spend billions of dollars a year on advertising. Market research firms are hired to test their ads and products or do research so that they know the best way to advertise to certain markets and which products are favored by customers. These market research companies have large groups of people they use to conduct these studies. They do their research by compensating people to test their products, to mystery shop and to take paid surveys.

Most of these paid surveys pay a small amount of money, usually between $3 and $15, and take about ten to twenty minutes to complete. Some people can make a significant amount of money by simply taking paid surveys.

Paid surveys are most often taken online, or less frequently through the mail or in person. Many websites exist where one can input certain characteristics about themselves and be emailed revalent surveys which are filled out for money.

Mystery Shopping

Mystery shopping

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.


Mystery Shopping is a (market) research method that is used in order to analyse the quality of consumers' experiences when carrying out a particular transaction. Usually a researcher will disguise himself as a consumer and will access a certain service that is offered. Subsequently the researcher will rate the quality of the shopping experience, for example whether staff was friendly, the information provided was sufficient for a purchasing decision and so on.

The method has it origins in the 1940's and was originally intended as a mechanism to control employer's integrity. Tools used for Mystery Shopping assessments can range from simple questionnaires to complete audio and video recordings. With the Internet opportunities for application of this method have greatly increased.

The Mystery Shopping industry had an estimated value of nearly $600 million in the United States in 2004, according to a 2005 market size report commissioned by the Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA). Companies that participated in the Report experienced an average growth of 11.1 percent from 2003 to 2004 and the average growth in the number of shops during that period was 12.2 percent. The Report estimates more than 8.1 million mystery shops were conducted in 2004. The Report represents the first attempt to quantify the size of the mystery shopping industry.

Marketing schemes have emerged in the past several years attempting to lure unsuspecting consumers into paying money in order to learn how to become a mystery shopper. What most people don't know, is that all the information necessary to become a mystery shopper is widely avialable on the internet.