Two in Three Shoppers Won’t Buy Products in Locked Display Cases
24th September 2024
Locked display cases, the theft-prevention measure that makes shopping less grab-and-go and more wait-and-see, aim to prevent shoplifting, but a new survey suggests that particular solution might be worse than the problem.
Worse for whom? If people won’t buy stuff in locked cases, how are the retail stores worse off than if they steal stuff?
Upon discovering that an item they want to buy is in a locked case, less than one in three shoppers (32%) get a store employee to unlock the case, according to a reader survey from Consumer World, a consumer advocacy website. For 55% of respondents, it’s a lost sale, because when a product is locked up, they try to buy it elsewhere. The remaining 13% try to find an alternative product in the same store that is not locked up.
Good luck trying to buy it elsewhere in high-crime areas, from places who are probably also putting stuff in locked cases. Look, ‘locked cases’ are used for high-value easily grabbed-and-gone stuff, and changing the store doesn’t change the nature of the product. ‘Finding an alternative product’ means a product not as amenable to snatch-and-run, and the store still makes a sale.