Program Goals/Program Components
Retailers have a special interest in preventing and deterring theft of high-loss or “hot” products by shoplifters. For example, premium razor blade replacement packs are considered high-loss items for some retailers because they are in high demand for regular personal use, are relatively expensive, are small and readily concealable, and can be converted into cash or drugs at flea markets, local stores, or over the Internet (Hayes et al. 2011). One method for protecting hot products is to have employees frequently account for and carefully handle these items using special protective handling procedures.
Special protective handling procedures for employees in retail stores are designed to reduce theft and accidental loss of hot products by both increasing attention paid to the high-loss product (to increase individual's perceived risk of detection), and reducing general access to the product (to hinder an individual’s ability to quickly access desirable items).
The special protective handling procedures for loss prevention include the following:
- Appointing a leader and co-leader to protect high-loss items to increase long-term process execution likelihood.
- Displaying a special protective process instructional poster in the employee break area that visually and textually describes the program’s importance and steps.
- Shipping all tested hot products (such as razor blade packs) to stores in specially secured shipping totes to reduce intentional and accidental loss.
- Quickly moving the high-loss products to the sales floor display shelf after back door store receipt, rather than storing them in back rooms, to reduce backroom theft and unintentional misplacement.
- Keeping in-store, on-shelf product quantities low and stocked to the normal store sales rate to reduce intentional and accidental loss vulnerability (as opposed to stocking large quantities on display peg hooks).
- Counting the product on the shelf each week to ensure ongoing asset surveillance and to keep track of items to prevent misplacement while quickly detecting item outages and problems (Hayes et al. 2012).
Program Theory
This program is grounded in rational choice theory and in the principles of situational crime prevention, which are derived from routine activities theory. Rational choice theory suggests that behavior inside retail stores is rational in that individuals will likely calculate the risk, effort, and potential benefit of stealing merchandise (Cornish and Clarke 2003).
The situational theoretical framework maintains that crime can be prevented if individuals are less motivated and better controlled, targets are made less profitable or more difficult or risky to attack, and retail managers and others are more motivated to prevent crime (Felson and Boba 2009). Employees who increase their attentiveness to and carefully handle desirable merchandise are therefore motivated to prevent product loss.
