Evidence-Based LP
A Huge Collaborative Effort N
o one person or company can do it all by themselves. And loss prevention or asset protection is no exception. LP professionals must plan for and combat internal and external theft and fraud, gross negligence, unintentional loss and shrinkage, computer attacks, travel and shipping crimes, natural and manmade disasters, injuries, and a host of other contingencies. To do it right means being cutting-edge. Like physicians, LP leaders need to be up-to-date on understanding crime and loss causal mechanisms (how stuff really happens), as well as the latest scientific and financial evidence on preventive measures. Fortunately this magazine and others, as well as associations like the Food Marketing Institute, Retail Industry Leaders Association, National Retail Federation, Retail Council of Canada, and others, including local and regional organized retail crime gatherings, help retailers with common problems meet with their colleagues and solutions partners to share ideas and experiences. It was in that vein that ten leading retail LP senior executives formed the Loss Prevention Research Council (LPRC) back in 2001. As you hopefully know by now, LPRC was designed by these visionary LP professionals to provide real-world innovation and scientific evidence to expand on anecdote and benchmarking. The LPRC’s board of advisors has structured the organization to support its members by sanctioning rigorous, but user-friendly research to be fed out to members in multiple formats.
Basecamp
All LPRC projects, committees, and working groups communicate and post images, video clips, reports, spreadsheets, and documents using their assigned virtual workspace on LPRC’s project website called Basecamp.
Working Groups
A key way many LPRC members collaborate with each other on problems and solutions, while planning needed research, is through participating in standing working groups. These working groups are led by two retail members, and include multiple retailers alongside solutions providers, product manufacturers, and LPRC scientists and project managers. Working groups are formed around a specific, critical asset protection need. The following four current groups are actively working their issues.
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March - April 2012
by Read Hayes, Ph.D., CPP Dr. Hayes is director of the Loss Prevention Research Council and coordinator of the Loss Prevention Research Team at the University of Florida. He can be reached at 321-303-6193 or via email at rhayes@lpresearch.org. © 2012 Loss Prevention Research Council
enefit Denial Working Group headed by Best Buy’s B Tim Fisher and Walmart’s Dain Sutherland. ■ Predictive Analytics Working Group headed by Sears Holdings’ Carlos Bacelis and Big Lots’ Kevin Wolfe. ■ Video Analytics Working Group headed by Bloomindale’s Fred Becker, Rite Aid’s Bob Oberosler, and Big Lots’ Richard Thompson. ■ Packaging Innovation Working Group headed by OfficeMax’s John Voytilla and Shannon Hunter along with Jeff Kellogg of MeadWestvaco. Each working group sets its own mission statement, objectives, process, and resources, and holds regular conference calls, meets at locations, uses its Basecamp virtual workspaces, and generally makes things happen via small pilot testing and by sanctioning broader research and development. ■
StoreLab
I’ve discussed LPRC’s virtual innovation program called StoreLab in this column many times, but the program is designed to use working stores and DCs to closely examine, tweak, improve, test, and determine crime and loss control effort strengths and weaknesses. LPRC uses these sites across the U.S. to learn how things work and fail, how shoppers respond, how offenders perceive and react to single and multiple cues, plus how employees use and would improve efforts. We learn basic and advanced things in these “laboratory” sites, and prepare protective interventions for larger-scale evaluation. Key StoreLab successes include the now widespread use of enhanced public-view monitors or ePVMS. LPRC started looking at moving PVMs into merchandise display areas approximately four years ago in our Gainesville, Florida, CVS/pharmacy StoreLab location. Based on feedback from offenders in that store and our Publix Super Market StoreLab store, we began to reduce PVM size to place it closer to high-loss items, and then add lighting and noises to help would-be offenders locate, identify, and “fear” this critical cue—hence these enhancements became known as ePVMs. We have since conducted five collaborative, large-scale randomized controlled trials (RCTs) or field experiments with ePVMs, finding them both efficacious and cost-effective in each case. The shopper intercept data alongside employee and
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