Locking their shelves is a last resort for stores, but it has never been widely practiced. It’s also been a source of growing frustration for shoppers and frustration for some employees who have to walk through the store with keys at the event.
“It’s very frustrating for customers,” said Paco Underhill, founder and CEO of behavioral research and consulting firm Envirocell. “It’s a brutal experience for the trader as well.”
The reason stores lock these products is simple: to prevent shoplifting. But these decisions are more sophisticated and fraught with pitfalls than you might think. Companies must walk a fine line between maintaining their inventory and creating stores that customers are not afraid to visit.
Shoplifting in America
Locking products was common until the beginning of the 20th century. When customers visit a store, clerks from behind the counter offer them the items they need.
This changed in the early 20th century when the first self-service stores, such as Piggly Wiggly, realized that they could sell more items and cut costs by spreading their merchandise over an open sales floor.
While having fewer employees in stores has boosted the chain’s profits in recent decades, it has also left it without more visible staff to prevent shoplifting in some cases, crime prevention experts say.
Shoplifting has been around for centuries, but it “came of age in America in 1965,” author Rachel Scheeter writes in “The Steal: A Cultural History of Shoplifting.” The FBI reported in 1965 that it had jumped 93 percent in the previous five years and was “the fastest growing form of fraud in the country.”
Three years later, authorities around the country have seen a further increase in teenage shoplifting. As exemplified by Abbie Hoffman’s “Steal This Book” in 1971, the trend became part of the counterculture.
In response, anti-commodity industry and corporate “Loss Prevention” (LP) and “Asset Protection” (AP) groups emerged. Technologies such as closed-circuit television cameras, electronic article tracking, and anti-theft tags have emerged.
‘Fresh Products’
According to Adrian Beck, who studies retail losses at the University of Leicester, stores want to keep the “few” most profitable products to sell. And they are willing to accept high theft at a low margin, “an easy majority,” he said.
Retailers target smaller items with higher value, often referred to as “hot products,” which are typically locked in bulk by retailers. A criminologist coined the apt acronym CRAVED to predict high-risk items: “Concealable, Avoidable, Available, Valuable, Fun and Disposable.”
Among the most commonly stolen items from American stores are cigarettes, health and beauty products, over-the-counter drugs, contraceptives, liquor, teeth whitening kits and other products.
Drug stores have more items under lock and key than other retail formats because they have a higher percentage of “fresh products” in the inventory, Beck said.
Organized retail crime
These measures include measures such as security tags on items that raise alarms when someone leaves without paying. But this is less valuable than it used to be because alarms are part of general store noise and are often ignored.
Stores use systems such as racks that allow a customer to pick up only one item at a time. This prevents consumers from emptying the entire product shelf.
Locking a product is the last step a retailer takes before removing the product altogether, and stores say they’re taking this step more frequently. As theft increases.
There is no national database on shoplifting, which often goes unreported, and stores and prosecutors rarely press charges.
Retailers say organized retail crime has exacerbated their theft problems. Criminal groups often seek to steal products from stores that can be easily and quickly sold on online marketplaces such as Amazon and other illegal markets.
“A lot of products are closing today because the problem has gotten so big,” said Lisa LaBruno, senior executive vice president of retail operations at the Association of Retail Industry Leaders. “Criminal actors can steal large quantities of products and sell them anonymously.”
Amazon says it doesn’t allow third-party sellers to list stolen goods and works closely with law enforcement, retailers and other partners to stop bad actors.
When we are concerned about how a seller obtained specific products, we regularly request invoices, purchase orders or other sources of information, the spokesperson said.
Angry customers and lost sales
Consumers today are more impatient. Some go out of their way to work and buy the product on Amazon.
“They’re trying to be frictionless for the customer, but they’re still trying to prevent the loss,” said Mark Stinde, former vice president of asset protection for Kroger and other large retailers. “You get a lot of pushback from operations and merchandising teams to lock things down.”
Stores are working on new ways to lock products while reducing customer frustration, such as a new type of case that any employee can open with a smartphone. Other cases require consumers to enter their phone number to open or scan a QR code.
“Consumers understand why you have to lock down a hair dresser or jewelry. But, ‘Why would we lock down deodorant?’ Says Jack Trika, co-founder of the LP magazine trade publication.
Trika expects companies to develop new technologies that protect products, but don’t require a staff member to open a shelf.
“There will be an evolution of security products,” he said.
