The Effect of Mystery Shopper Reports on Age Verification for Tobacco Purchases

Abstract

Mystery shops involving attempted tobacco purchases by young buyers have been implemented in order to monitor retail stores' performance in refusing underage sales. Anecdotal evidence suggests that mystery shop visits with immediate feedback to store personnel can improve age verification. This study investigated the effect of monthly and twice-monthly mystery shop reports on age verification. Mystery shoppers visited 45 Walgreens stores 20 times. The stores were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions. Control group stores received no feedback, whereas 2 treatment groups received feedback communications on every visit (twice monthly) or on every second visit (monthly) after baseline. Logit regression models tested whether each treatment group improved verification rates relative to the control group. Postbaseline verification rates were higher in both treatment groups than in the control group, but only the stores receiving monthly communications had a significantly greater improvement compared with the control group stores. Verification rates increased significantly during the study period for all 3 groups, with delayed improvement among control group stores. Communication between managers regarding the mystery shop program may account for the delayed age-verification improvements observed in the control group stores. Encouraging interstore communication might extend the benefits of mystery shop programs beyond those stores that receive this intervention.

Acknowledgments

Data collection costs for this research were supported by a grant from Walgreens, Inc. to the Responsible Retailing Forum, Inc. The views expressed in this article reflect those of the authors and not those of Walgreens, Inc. Analysis was also supported by National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Research Center Grant P60-AA006282-28.

Notes

Note. Outcome measure is coded “1” if the clerk refused to sell tobacco without presentation of valid ID, “0” otherwise. N = 859 store visits.

Note. Numbers in parentheses are t statistics associated with each regression coefficient. Outcome measure coded 1 if purchaser's age was verified by store personnel, 0 otherwise. City effects in Model 1 are relative to Milwaukee, which is the excluded category. N = 859 store visits (up to 20 semimonthly visits to each of 45 stores).

***p ≤ .001. **p ≤ .01. *p ≤ .05 (two-sided).