Crime of Opportunity

​Over the past decade, retail and grocery stores have been turning to self-service checkout lanes to create a better shopping experience: making purchases will be easier and quicker, while store staff can be mobilized away from checkouts and into more customer-focused roles. However, self-checkouts and mobile shop-and-pay programs generate significantly higher rates of loss, a new report finds. 

Developments in Retail Mobile Scanning Technologies: Understanding the Potential Impact on Shrinkage & Loss Prevention, a report by professors Adrian Beck and Dr. Matt Hopkins of the University of Leicester, analyzed data from nearly 12 million shopping trips from four major British retailers between 2013 and 2015. The researchers found that using self-checkouts in stores increased the rate of loss by 122 percent to an average of 3.9 percent of turnover.​​

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