Professor Adrian Beck and Dr Matt Hopkins from the Department of Criminology at the University of Leicester are seeking input into a research project entitled: Developments in Mobile Scanning Technologies: Understanding the Potential Impact on Shrinkage and Loss Prevention.
The research team will be working with retailers in the UK, mainland Europe and the US and is funded by the UK Government’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The 12-month project, started in January and is focused exclusively on understanding how the use of customer-owned mobile devices for scanning and paying for products might impact upon shrinkage and the way in which products are protected in the future.
According to Professor Beck, the ultimate aim of the research will not only identify how retailers can identify and manage the risk of loss generated via mobile scanning, but will also add to academic literature in relation to commercial victimisation, design and crime, and crime prevention.
Professor Beck outlines the details as follows:
The key aims are to explore issues around the implementation of mobile scanning technologies within the retail environment; establish the potential impact of such technologies upon shrinkage, and to understand the impact of mobile scanning on the use of existing product protection technologies/how this might lead to the development of new product protection approaches. These aims and objectives will be addressed through the following research questions:
▪How might mobile self-scanning technologies be used to facilitate shop theft – what new opportunities for
deviant behaviour can be identified?
▪How might current and future loss prevention technologies (such as CCTV, EAS and other forms of product
protection) need to be adapted to minimise the risk of losses from mobile self-scanning?
▪Given our current understanding of the importance of generating perceptions of risk and utilising the concept of
a zone of control to achieve this, how will this be generated when customers use this technology – will there be
a need to undertake random audits for instance?
▪How will ‘surveillance’ operate within the store to ensure customer compliance? Can a ‘virtual zone of control’
be created either via the App or through for instance changes in store design and procedures?
▪How will any existing legislative requirements on the prohibition of the sale of certain products (such as
alcohol) to minors be managed?
▪In what ways should retailers consider the design of current and future stores to take account of the risks this
technology might generate – for instance how customers enter and leave?
▪How should store and security staff be trained to recognise potentially deviant self-scan behaviour – will there
be a need to create new store roles such as roving mobile scanning assistants for instance?
▪Should new technologies be developed/introduced to facilitate the identification of self-scan facilitated deviant
behaviour and if so how might it work?
▪How robust will systems need to be in order to cope with errors/problems such as unreadable barcodes,
battery failure, lack of Wi-Fi connectivity, customer-initiated voids, price reductions, voucher scams, incorrect
scanning of items (such as non-scanning of ‘free’ items in buy one get one free deals) and the
misrepresentation of goods at weighing stations (carrots for grapes scams)?
Contributions are welcome from any organisation that may have an interest in this topic: please email Professor Beck (bna@le.ac.uk) or Dr Hopkins (mh330@le.ac.uk).
