EVIDENCE-BASED LP

Retailers’ Research Objectives

No matter what, crime and loss keep happening. That’s why every issue of this column is dedicated to supporting LP professionals. I really hope sharing research findings, crime-prevention concepts, and research methods helps all of us get better at reducing potential and actual crime and loss as well as getting adequate budgets to accomplish this end.

As most readers now hopefully know, Loss Prevention Research Council (LPRC) retail members drive our research objectives. In turn, the LPRC team determines how best to meet retailers’ objectives by choosing the best guiding theory and research methods. As mentioned before, we use multi-method research to better understand and measure loss dynamics and protective processes. Below are some of our latest efforts and current findings.

StoreLab Learning and Innovation Centers

LPRC’s StoreLab program is designed to innovate, pilot, and improve solo and combined asset protection efforts in active store or distribution center locations. We are now working in over sixteen locations in Gainesville, Florida, two in Chicago, one in Atlanta, and four in Los Angeles. These working retail locations are provided by member companies Home Depot, SUPERVALU, Publix, AutoZone, OfficeMax, CVS/pharmacy, Office Depot, Advance Auto, and T.J.Maxx.

We’re using these stores and others to learn how current and proposed enhancements or new technologies and processes work using some sales and loss data as well as shopper, employee, and offender interviews. A key thing we’re working on now is how specific crime and loss events occur on a micro level. We’re also looking very closely at the mechanisms of action of technologies. Most events result from a cascade of concurrent and sequential factors. To be really precise and cost-efficient, we need to understand these processes. We’re accumulating a lot of report briefs and video highlights to aid our learning.

One key point of note—bad things happen as a result of a cascade of preceding events and environmental factors. And good things like prevention happen when we interrupt or “shock” would-be offenders by changing the factors. We’re learning about this on a micro level in our StoreLab locations, as well as by interviewing offenders. This way we can see and hear about what’s probably causing what and why.

LPRC working groups, including benefit denial, product protection, video analytics, and packaging innovation, are looking at a variety of new technologies for deployment into lab store locations, including electronic and chemical product or packaging locks, laser detection, peg and fixture solutions, sticker and logo variations, and facial and movement recognition.

We use our large-scale randomized controlled trials or field experiments, as well as statistical models to learn on a more macro scale what’s going on and why. We need both scales and all the data we can get to gain the greatest understanding.

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. © 2011 loss Prevention Research council

Offender Research

LPRC researcher Corrie Tallman is heading LPRC’s multi-faceted offender interviewing program. This component is critical to everything we do. We need to understand offender characteristics and how that affects how they notice, interpret, and respond to environments and asset protection efforts. We’ve talked to hundreds of offenders by phone and had dozens walk through our lab locations so far as we add and tweak the loss prevention efforts. Our interview data come from multiple external and internal sources: ■ ORC—We are working with several ORC teams around the U.S. to systematically interview boosters and fences. We’ve been on location raids and done many field interviews with all levels of offenders. ■ In-store—Several retail chains are preparing to collect data from all detained offenders by having their in-store people ask a set of key questions. ■ Referral—Multiple chains have their in-store LP people recruit detainees to call our interviewers. ■ Public recruiting—We are also recruiting active offenders from all levels and types via advertisements. ■ Employees—We have recently begun collecting data from detained dishonest employees from three chains with more retailers coming on line.

Impact Conference

October 10 – 12 , Boca Raton, FL

All retailers…members or not…are invited to participate in the lPrc’s Annual Impact Workshop and conference being held this year at office Depot’s Boca raton, Florida, headquarters october 10 – 12. this year’s agenda includes group exercises on new experimental, statistical, and interview research findings, as well as live offender interaction, orc surveillance and sting vehicles, and a lot of highly interactive networking events. If you are interested, please contact Jenna Pennington at jpennington@lpresearch.org for more information.

Offender interviews and store visits are dramatically increasing our ability to better overload or deter offenders by helping them better see, understand, and fear situationally deployed deterrent cues around high-loss and high-crime items and areas.

Predictive Analytics Or Data Modeling

Our team is statistically looking at how factors outside stores, such as interacting with parking lot, and interior variables explain and predict outcomes, including sales, accident, and loss levels. We mostly want to explain, not just predict, good and bad levels or events, so we use different variables and different statistical techniques. Both are important. Retailing experts work to propose what probably explains what, and how to best measure these variables.

We then test these hypotheses using inferential statistics. Our current focus is on explaining between store variance, so we look at what drives individual store risk level, as well as how well a given store handles their risk level. We think this is very important since spurious or other non-important relationships don’t really get us too far down the road we all want to be on. We’re of course finding how important management knowledge, tools, commitment, and execution are, as well as other social and built environmental factors.

Randomized Controlled Trials

We’ve now completed nine field experiments, or randomized controlled trials (RTC), and are currently in the middle of two more with even more planned. As an experimentalist, I firmly believe we should rigorously determine how well an LP effort works by using good sampling, assignment, control, measurement, and analysis. Small pilots and simple before-and-after observations are helpful, but loss is so high, and safety and reputation are so precious, we believe in using best science to study efficacy or impact as well cost-effectiveness.

RCTs are not perfect. They are strong on measuring cause and effect in studied locations, but are not as strong for extrapolating results. But by using larger stratified samples, we can better estimate outside tested store results.

We’ve now tested Keepers/safers twice, protective fixtures three times, enhanced CCTV public-view monitors (ePVM) twice, enhanced CCTV domes (eDomes) once, Spiderwraps once, source-tagged hidden EAS once, and store-applied visible EAS tags once. We’ve also evaluated a set of in-store protective procedures and in-store warning signage.

We have found all tested processes can work or fail, but all have been found effective when specifically tailored to specific problems and stores (think situational crime prevention). Our team is now working with packaging, stickers, new fixtures, and even more enhanced ePVMs, with even more testing in detailed planning.

Membership Update

LPRC member retailers are excited to announce continuing membership growth with the recent additions of Walgreens, eBay, Meijer, Toys“R”Us, PWC, Rite Aid, 7-Eleven, Bloomingdales, and Barnes & Noble to our roster. The group is now talking to over a dozen additional retail chains they want to interact with and engage in the multiple research projects, conference calls, and meetings.