Author Description

The world of retailing is going through profound change – the drive to provide consumers with an increasingly ‘friction-free’ shopping experience is dominating the agenda of many retailers. To achieve this, they have begun to utilise a range of technologies that enable the consumer to select and pay for products with little or no interaction with employees – the rise of what is generally described as self-scan and checkout (SCO) technologies. Often derided as turning shoppers into unpaid checkout assistants, they have become an increasingly familiar sight in retail stores around the world. While offering opportunities for retailers to reduce costs and provide consumers with a greater range of ways in which they scan and pay for their products, they have also raised concerns about the extent to which they generate retail losses.This ground-breaking book looks in detail at this issue. Based upon extensive research with 13 of the largest retail SCO users in the world, analysing 140 million Scan and Go transactions; 17 million transaction audits; video analysis of €72 billion of Fixed checkout transactions; comparative stock loss data from thousands of retail stores; and extensive interviews with industry representatives, it is the most comprehensive review to date on the impact of SCO technologies on retail loss. It provides a unique insight into not only the scale and extent of retail losses associated with various types of SCO, but also the factors that might explain why consumers take products without paying for them, and the approaches retailers can use to try and ensure shoppers remain honest and accurate when using these technologies.