Two in three shoppers won't buy products in locked display cases

Also in the &#x27;solution to shop-lifting makes me shop elsewhere&#x27;, there are two locally-owned independent hardware stores in walking distance from my home.<p>One has a &#x27;buzz to enter&#x27; vestibule with two doors whose locks are controlled by the cashier. You ring the exterior bell, the cashier buzzes you through the first door, and only after it closes will they buzz open the second door -- so you&#x27;re trapped. The same is true on the exit. No one can run out of the store with an expensive power tool they didn&#x27;t pay for. But even though I&#x27;m not stealing anything but I find the whole experience so deeply unpleasant that I&#x27;ve stopped going there at all.<p>The second independent hardware store now has multiple security people at the front, and a mandatory bag-check policy. Except the bag check line is the customer service line, and I&#x27;ve literally waited 30 minutes total to drop off and then pick up my bag, stuck behind people with elaborate customer service requests. They have a bunch of staff on the floor, but they often don&#x27;t actually know where stuff is, whether they carry X, etc. It becomes impossible to make a quick purchase of a single item.<p>So more and more, I&#x27;m apt to buy whatever it was online. I don&#x27;t want the extra amazon packaging. I tried going literally out of my way to buy at the local independent business. But they made it such a crap waste-of-time experience.

&gt; “A year ago, America’s stores declared a shoplifting epidemic,” stated the CNN article. “This year, retailers are telling a very different story—or no story at all. It’s as if the shoplifting crisis suddenly vanished.”<p>Or maybe because they closed down a lot of stores which were the worst and then on the borderline stores, they put up all the locked cabinets. Maybe now the rates of shrink have been reduced. There&#x27;s no data here to go either way on this, just pure speculation.

I certainly don&#x27;t. I resent having to go find someone to unlock, and then being pressured to pick what I want when I haven&#x27;t had a chance to review the product differences&#x2F;prices etc.<p>The company near me that went long on this approach (Walgreens) also spent a small fortune recently on replacing glass refrigerator doors with giant screens to serve me adverts when what I want is a cool drink. It didn&#x27;t work out well.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.techdirt.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;10&#x2F;06&#x2F;startups-tech-for-displaying-ads-on-walgreens-cooler-doors-is-on-fire-literally&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.techdirt.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;10&#x2F;06&#x2F;startups-tech-for-displa...</a>

Talk about a downward spiral of terrible decisions. Cut staff and add checkout machines to save money. Customers start stealing (legit or not) so they lock down items behind glass, but have no staff to help customers so they see less sales! Wild.<p>I hope the shareholders who accepted these changes feel pain.

It’s near impossible to buy those things. I live in a region of the world where condoms are locked up at the local mega chemist. Absolutely no embarrassment here on buying them of course. It’s just that pressing the button does nothing. None of the minimum wage staff give a fuck (can’t blame them). You’ll just be standing there waiting in an almost empty store. The sole clerk at the counter can’t really leave their post and there’s no one else around. Not to mention not being able to look at the boxes first so you’re going to have to take 10mins of someone’s time at least while they stand there with the display open for a sale that nets $.50 profit.<p>I buy online. Would suck to be a kid in that situation though.

&gt; Dworsky acknowledged that the results might be skewing high because it was an opt-in survey that readers took rather than a random one, and said his audience tends to be “interested in consumer matters,” which may mean they have a lower threshold for consumer inconvenience.<p>Well, I&#x27;m not a reader of his survey and my general solution to inconveniences is to do something else also. That said, if my purpose of going to the store was to get that item I would try to find an employee to open it.<p>However, I might not go to that store again if I thought items I wanted were going to be locked. Nothings lock online :&#x2F;<p>What should the stores do? Honestly, not too sure. I don&#x27;t find getting receipt checked at costco a big deal so that&#x27;s definitely an approach.

I recently went to a store and they had no Apple products on display. It looked like they only sold accessories for iPhones. There weren’t even placeholders or signs. You had to ask the right employee for the specific product and you had to pay for it at a specific register before you could have it.<p>The only reason I thought to ask was because their website said they had plenty in stock.

But also 99 of 100 thieves won’t steal products in locked display cases.

&gt; <i>National chains including Target have put much of their inventory behind glass in recent years as a response to what they call organized retail crime</i><p>The Target personnel around here are usually nice, but the stores have the most conspicuous Loss Prevention activity in recent years, especially (besides the locked shelves) with what comes off as LP soft interventions.<p>As a result, despite being a non-shoplifter, I&#x27;ve become self-conscious whenever I go into a Target (which is pretty often, lately, for location convenience reasons), unlike most other stores.<p>I really wonder whether Target has considered how various measures intended to thwart shoplifters -- not only the locked shelves -- have negative implications for genuine customers.<p>For example, take subtle signaling intended for shoplifters: it&#x27;s not like shoplifters are the only ones who pick up on that. (Some people don&#x27;t notice, but some people do.)<p>I thought Target was supposed to be like Walmart, but with more designer style, and relatively upscale pretense. Yet lately it&#x27;s like they&#x27;re insinuating that shoppers are in a bad neighborhood, that ordinary individual shoppers are suspect, and they&#x27;ve got their eye on you.

I was in a CVS where they had all the Tylenol&#x2F;Advil behind a locked glass display, and all the CVS headache relief on the shelf. I mentioned to an employee that this seemed unfair&#x2F;illegal, and they responded that &quot;people only steal the brand name Advil, so that&#x27;s what we lock up&quot;. Seems unlikely to me.<p>Anyone else see something like this at CVS?

This being an opt in survey definitely makes the numbers suspect, but I agree with the sentiment at least.

“The whole thing has a whiff of pawnshop, which might actually be unfair to pawnshops.”<p>Totally unfair to pawnshops: small stores typically have good service. Goods are behind the counter, but there is a person staffing that counter typically every minute that the store is open. The liquor store keeps expensive beverages behind the counter. I don&#x27;t hesitate to go there, because the clerk is always there to retrieve items behind the counter.<p>Go to Target, Home Depot, or CVS, and good luck finding anyone to help. I&#x27;m pushing a button and standing around helplessly, or asking a nearby employee who looks up quizzically and says &quot;I don&#x27;t have the key.&quot; If someone finally unlocks it, then they might have to escort the item across the huge store, where a cashier now has to get it and ring me up.<p>Unlike tiny stores, big box stores are based on self service. Remove the self-service and the whole concept falls apart.

What people say they won&#x27;t do and what they actually won&#x27;t do are not the same thing

You can buy a hundred shaving razors for like $10, as of 2016, the last time I bought. They will last you a long time, if you bought them. But you can’t buy them at any supermarket that I know of. They only sell Gillette or Wilkinson’s, which, at around 2,5 each, are a bad deal.<p>These blades must be held behind display cases because consumers would rather risk their honour than paying the deal.<p>Other products that are behind supermarket locked glass are alcohol bottles (overtly expensive poisonous water), perfume (ditto), and I don’t know what else.<p>So, at the end of the day, supermarket locked display cases show overtly expensive products which are not worth their money; so why bother?

My local big-box home store had measurement devices (e.g. laser range finder; fancy tape measures) in a locked glass-fronted case. But the gap between the shelf above and the top of the glass was wide enough for me to fish around in there and get the one I wanted.<p>Which I proceeded to checkout to buy, without incident.<p>I wonder if they later had some inventory issue. No I guess I don&#x27;t wonder; that&#x27;s all on them.

&gt; For 55% of respondents, it’s a lost sale, because when a product is locked up, they try to buy it elsewhere.<p>It&#x27;s wild to me that someone would rather go back to their car, drive somewhere else, HOPE it&#x27;s not locked up there also, and THEN finally purchase the item at the new store instead of just waiting for someone to come unlock it at the current store you&#x27;re at. I&#x27;ve personally never had to wait more than a few minutes for someone to come unlock a locked display. I find it very hard to believe anyone would rather add 30+ mins to their overall trip than just wait at the current store.<p>My hunch is 2 things:<p>1) This is a case of &quot;wishful&quot; thinking rather than what they actually do. For a survey like this, people probably just unintentionally lied rather than what they would ACTUALLY do (wait for it to be unlocked).<p>2) The study would be much more accurate if you could actually somehow track what they did rather than just survey them on what they think they would do.<p>Also, I could see this being a case of not purchasing impulse items. However, if you go to the store for toothpaste that you need, and all the toothpaste is locked up, then again, I find it hard to believe you don&#x27;t wait.<p>As someone else said in another comment: &quot;What people say they won&#x27;t do and what they actually won&#x27;t do are not the same thing&quot;

I recently tried to buy a single button cell battery at my local store. They&#x27;re in a locked case near the entrance. I told the attendant which one I wanted, they handed it to me, I tried to putting it in my basket and was immediately told &quot;no, you can&#x27;t do that, do your shopping first and then come back for this&quot;.<p>I went home and ordered it online. With free shipping. It ended up being cheaper than the one in the store to boot.<p>Play stupid games, lose paying customers.<p>Same goes with shops that refuse entry to people with bags (even a small backpack! but a purse is OK for some reason). I just won&#x27;t shop there. Goodbye.

&gt; Mentions of “shrink” on earnings calls for the first two quarters of 2024 were down 20% compared to the same period a year ago according to a FactSet analysis cited by CNN.<p>&gt; “A year ago, America’s stores declared a shoplifting epidemic,” stated the CNN article. “This year, retailers are telling a very different story—or no story at all. It’s as if the shoplifting crisis suddenly vanished.”<p>Kind of disingenuous of CNN here to declare that a 20% reduction in mentions is equivalent with &quot;vanishing&quot;.

I&#x27;m torn on this. First, yes, I find locked items obnoxious. Still not happy that the easy to find nasal medicine in many stores was found to be garbage.<p>That said, by the numbers here, it isn&#x27;t clear how often people succeed at buying the item in another store. For a truly hilarious spin, you could think that having the item out where folks can touch things is itself the dark pattern that is encouraging people to buy things they don&#x27;t need.

&gt; “If I encounter a locked case, I’m not going to start looking for a store clerk going up and down every aisle or pressing the button and waiting for someone to come over,” Dworsky told Retail Brew. “But the fact that it was over 50% of people that felt the way I did? I was really surprised.”<p>You&#x27;re surprised that bad customer service leads people away from the business providing it? This was a 101 problem. If you lock it, you need someone around to quickly unlock it, to satisfy your shoppers.<p>To me, locking it up was _never_ about shoplifting, but about reducing customer service to it&#x27;s bare minimum while still utilizing monopoly control and government interference and mismanagement to maintain a position without any actual competition.<p>I mean, who _else_ but someone unconcerned with competition would even _think_ to lock up their products, as an _opening move_?

I just wait and get it elsewhere.