Retail crime is the biggest problem being faced by stores and retail chains. It costs the U.S. retail industry approximately $45 billion each year. Profit margins are crippled by theft, shoplifting, fraud and Organized Retail Crime (ORC). You will be hard pressed to find a retailer who hasn’t been impacted by ORC. But the point more important than loss of profit is that retail crimes put the people who are in the shops at that time in danger. If there ever was a time to look for a proactive strategy to prevent retail crime, it’s now.
What the Stats Tell Us
According to the National Retail Federation (NFR), ORC is to blame for approximately $30 billion loss each year. And it doesn’t seem to be going down. 71.3% of the retailers that were surveyed reported an increase in ORC over the year.
According to D&D Daily, robberies and burglaries are up by 8.6% since 2016.
According to a FaceFirst study 60 percent shoplifters who were known were found going into separate locations of the same store. And 20 percent shoplifters went to three or more separate shops of the same retail store.
What are the Solutions?
Numerous grocery stores, pharmacies and other retailers are jumping onto the facial recognition bandwagon fast. This technology is greatly decreasing the ORC related losses and violence. Based on the current trends of the industry and the momentum of facial recognition technology, the prediction is that all major retailers will soon be integrating face recognition with their current security measures to not only improve security but also customer experience.
Why Solve Crime When You Can Prevent Crime?
Facial recognition is offering the retail industry that no other security technology does: the ability to prevent crime before it even happens. This is done by immediately informing the store security about known shoplifters as soon as they are recognized. According to retailers, this technique is far superior and safer for their customers than waiting for some of these shoplifters to actually commit a crime and then catching them red handed.
Robust ROI
With facial recognition you don’t have to wait a couple of years, a couple of months, or even a couple of days to get the return you’re expecting. This technology starts giving you the ROI from day one. As soon as the facial database is flooded with the faces of dishonest customers, it starts working. The instant it recognizes one of the faces, it alerts the shop security and they are able to apprehend the customer quietly and effectively hence preventing the crime form happening at all.
Safe Space
According to the D&D Daily, 2016 saw over 424 violent deaths at retail stores. And this has only increased in the following years. But the businesses that have implemented facial recognition have seen a drastic decrease in violent crimes. There is clearly a strong connection between theft prevention and violence prevention.
Easy to Use
Shops that installed Facial recognition technology have reported that one of the reasons why they like this technology is its operational ease. Once installed, it basically runs itself. The security team gets real time alerts and the whole altercation between security and harmful customers is handled in the most subtle and quiet way possible.
For these reasons and many more, stores all over the world are expected to implement facial recognition technology at a fast rate.
