East European underwear buying: What customers really expect?

Munich - Czechs are best in taking care about customer service, Hungarians excel in loyalty building, and Lithuanians win in regard of store presentation. These are the conclusions that can be made on the basis of a current mystery shopping survey conducted by INTERNATIONAL SERVICE CHECK. Mystery shoppers tested 192 underwear stores in nine European countries.

From November 2010 until January 2011 INTERNATIONAL SERVICE CHECK conducted an international survey of stores of the most popular underwear brands. Stores located in big and medium cities of nine European countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia) were given a closer look by mystery shoppers. In total customers performed 192 surveys. As much as eight brands were surveyed in international frame.

Due to survey’s characteristics 94,8% of the mystery shoppers in this project were women. The most numerous age group taking part in the survey were people between 25 and 35 years old (58,9%).

The best results (100% of points obtained) were achieved by these stores:

1. J. Press – Debrecen, Csapo utca 30
2. Seven Seconds – Sofia, 115, Tzarigradsko Shouse blvd
3. Triumph – Riga, Baznicas 33
4. Triumph – Riga, Stacijas laukums 2
5. Veļas Pasaule – Riga, Lielirbes iela 29

The best appraised brands in this survey:

1. Lanoro Poland – 94,5%
2. Triumph Czech Republic – 94,4%
3. Bepon Czech Republic – 94,0%

The Czech stores took the highest place on the podium with the result of 85,9%, followed by Hungary with the result of 85,2% and Bulgaria that obtained the note of 78,2%. Poland was placed on 4th position (78%), ex aequo with Slovakia, outdistanced Lithuania (76,6%), Estonia (74,2%), Latvia (73,9%) and Romania (73,8%).

When it comes to the quality of customer service Czechs were also the best (92,5%). Second place was achieved by Hungary (89,2%), third by Slovakia (84,3%) and fourth by Polish service (83,5%). Fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth place were taken by following countries: Bulgaria (80,5%), Latvia (77,8%), Lithuania (77,7%) and Romania (76,1%). The testers rated the weakest performance of service in Estonian markets (71,2%).

Lithuanian stores showed extraordinary care about visual issues that were appraised by mystery shoppers for 93,6% of points. In this aspect Estonia (91%), Hungary (90%), Bulgaria (88,4%) and Czech Republic (87,4%) were also evaluated high. Poland took 6th place with the result of 85,9%, outpacing Latvia (85,5%), Romania (85,2%) and Slovakia (83%).

Poles do not manage very well with building customer loyalty. On that score Poland was at the far end (41%) together with Latvia (39%). Hungarians who were on the top with the note 58,7% could successfully tell the Poles how to do it. Czech Republic (55,4%) and Estonia (54,3) also manage quite well with that issue. A bit worse do Bulgaria (53,5%), Slovakia (43,8%), Romania (42,5%) and Lithuania (41,2%).

The INTERNATIONAL SERVICE CHECK/Multisearch GmbH was founded in Munich in 1996 as market research enterprise specializing in mystery shopping services worldwide. Currently over 500.000 test clients, so-called service checkers, are registered with International Service Check.

INTERNATIONAL SERVICE CHECK/Multisearch GmbH
Tobias Kurzmaier
Chief Press Officer
Dachauer Strasse 37
80335 Munich
Germany
Tel. +49 (0) 89 54558228
Fax +49 (0) 89 557443
E-Mail t.kurzmaier@internationalservicecheck.com
www.internationalservicecheck.com

This release was published on openPR.