Lonergan Buys Two to Expand Mystery Shopping Offer

In Australia, mystery shopping agency Lonergan has acquired Prime Auto Mystery Shopping and qual recruitment agency Ava Research, boosting its mystery shopper numbers to 40,000 nationally and its qual database to more than 70,000 respondents. Terms of the deals have not been disclosed.

Melbourne-based Prime Auto launched in Australia in 2003 and recently expanded into the New Zealand market. Clients include automotive manufacturers, importers, dealer groups and individual dealers. Ava is headquartered in Sydney and provides a variety of recruitment services across Australia, operating fully in-house and allowing recruiters and project managers to work together.

The two now join the Lonergan group of companies, which offer mystery shopping expertise covering the food and beverage, retail, travel, hospitality, local government and telecoms industries. In addition, Lonergan delivers recruitment services for the government and the research industry, has fieldwork services including CATI facilities, and face-to-face interviewing nationally; and provides quant research, big data/data science, data journalism and complex research project management.

CEO and founder Chris Lonergan (pictured) comments: 'The processes we use at Lonergan are built from decades of experience, coupled with the size of our database we are now the pre-eminent qualitative recruitment supplier in Australia. The acquisition of Prime has further boosted our shopper numbers and provided a wealth of new skills in the automotive and regulatory compliance sectors'.

Web sites: www.lonergan.team , www.primemysteryshopping.com.au and www.avaresearch.com.au .