EVIDENCE-BASED LP

A Huge Collaborative Effort

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

No 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. ■ Benefit Denial Working Group headed by Best Buy’s

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

Research Projects

LPRC has conducted over sixty-five research projects over the last decade, but many of these have been highly collaborative with as many as eight retail chains involved, alongside multiple solutions providers and high-risk product vendors. Projects include: ■ Learning what protective interventions most store managers would need to give them the confidence to openly display high-risk items and how offenders search for vulnerable areas; ■ Whether ePVMs, safers/Keepers, enhanced CCTV domes, secure display fixtures, special peg hooks, and brightly-colored

EAS tags are effective at controlling loss, to name just two.

Project grant funds have come from several foresighted companies, including Bacardi, Abbott Nutrition, Sears, SUPERVALU, CVS/pharmacy, Publix, Kroger, Advance Auto, and P&G, as well as technology and deployment support from solutions providers, including Alpha, CCI-Cam Connections, Clinton, FFR-DSI, InVue, Medeco, Retailers Advantage, and Rock-Tenn. Collaborative projects continue at LPRC.

Impact Workshop

LPRC has put out research findings and discussed implications at Impact conferences now for over six years, with the next one scheduled to be hosted by the University of Florida this coming October 15 – 17, 2012, in Gainesville. This year’s workshop and conference promises even more collaboration via multiple breakout groups and interactive sessions and case studies.

Upcoming Action Groups

With so many retailers joining LPRC, the board of advisors voted recently to expand to add retailer action groups of like chains, including: ■ Small-box specialty retailers like Kay Jewelers,

Jared, T.J.Maxx, and Marshalls; ■ Big-box merchants like Best Buy, Office Depot,

Pep Boys, AutoZone, Advance Auto, Lowe’s, Home

Depot, Cabela’s, and Dick’s Sporting Goods; ■ Department store chains like Sears, Kmart,

Walmart, AAFES, and Bloomingdale’s; and ■ Supermarket/drug store retailers like Walgreens, Rite Aid,

CVS, Publix, SUPERVALU, Kroger, and Wegmans.

These groups will tackle similar problems, while commissioning StoreLab innovation and rigorous field research alongside their many solutions partners.

Ongoing Collaboration

Making retailing safer and more profitable is a major undertaking requiring real research and a ton of collaboration. Fortunately retail publications, conferences, associations, and executives are stepping up to tie together problem solvers, alongside practitioners and solution developers. At LPRC we are striving to play a key support role to our members and the industry.

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