Considering a “reinventing of the in-store experience”, I think it’s important to consider the fundamentals. Retailers need to create an enticing in-store experience that can draw customers into the store and make them feel good about the time they spent there. Customers need to feel valued, trusted, and safe.  With the increased deployment of friction additive loss prevention solutions in brick-and-mortar stores, retailers run the risk of upsetting these basic feelings of value, trust and safety and inciting consumer backlash with an inadvertent drive to prevalent online retailers.

Many consumers opting to purchase in a brick-and-mortar store want to have the option to touch and feel a product before and while purchasing it. Requiring consumers to take actions to request and retrieve a product from behind a locked case and possibly even waiting until they are at a checkout stand to be reunited with it certainly takes a toll on the patience of shoppers (not to mention adds labor and other costs to the operation).

As a loss prevention solution provider, we encourage retailers to challenge vendors like us to innovate and deliver solutions that preserve these elements of the traditional shopping experience. At Gatekeeper Systems, we strive to develop loss prevention solutions that do not require adjustments in the shopper’s experience to accommodate the behavior of bad actors. Not disrupting the flow of a shopping cart that has met all the criteria of a paid shopping trip is a primary feature of our Purchek® Pushout Theft Prevention Solution. Advancement in technology enables the development of even better solutions for loss prevention and as a community of solution providers and retailers we need to strive to protect the retail environment.