An assessment from analytics firm RDS Solutions says shoppers wait nearly eight minutes on average for under-key products in stores to be unlocked.
To deal with mounting theft, retailers increasingly place products under lock and key, requiring customers to ask employees to access specific items. What was once reserved for more expensive products has rapidly evolved into securing even relatively inexpensive products.
Retailers must choose between securing valuable stock and frustrating customers or not locking stock and incurring severe losses. For customers, the rise in theft has made the shopping experience increasingly cumbersome. In some cases, growing theft has simply led stores to shut down completely, like Whole Foods shuttering a relatively new location in San Francisco last year.
RDS concluded that the average wait time to have an item unlocked is 7.7 minutes. The firm used data from a week of records beginning on September 30 from over 600 drug, grocery, and mass-market retailers in the United States and Canada. Only items cheaper than $10 were assessed as part of the research.
Mass retailers, like Walmart, had the longest wait times at 8.6 minutes. Grocery stores came in second place with an average time of 7.5 minutes, while drug stores took an average of 6.9 minutes.
In one reader poll conducted by Consumer World, two-thirds of shoppers did not request an associate when an item they wanted was locked up. In another survey by Retail Brew, the rate was even higher. A full four out of five people surveyed said they did not purchase the item because of the hurdle of being locked up.
Earlier this week, The Dallas Express reported that some Walmart locations in North Texas are trialing body cams to help improve store safety. U.S. retailers continue to experience growing “inventory shrinkage,” a term referring to lost stock driven largely by theft.
In 2021, retailers lost $94.5 billion to inventory shrinkage. In 2022, that number jumped to $112 billion.
In fact, the National Retail Federation says shoplifting has risen 93% since 2019. In 2023 alone, shoplifting surged 26% from the prior year. Not only that, thefts are increasingly becoming more bold and threatening, like the four-person armed robbery that occurred earlier this month at Dillard’s Department Store in Fairview.