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

One has a 'buzz to enter' 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're trapped. The same is true on the exit. No one can run out of the store with an expensive power tool they didn't pay for. But even though I'm not stealing anything but I find the whole experience so deeply unpleasant that I've stopped going there at all.

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'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't actually know where stuff is, whether they carry X, etc. It becomes impossible to make a quick purchase of a single item.

So more and more, I'm apt to buy whatever it was online. I don'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.

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's no data here to go either way on this, just pure speculation.

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't work out well.

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/10/06/startups-tech-for-displa...

I hope the shareholders who accepted these changes feel pain.

I buy online. Would suck to be a kid in that situation though.

Well, I'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.

However, I might not go to that store again if I thought items I wanted were going to be locked. Nothings lock online :/

What should the stores do? Honestly, not too sure. I don't find getting receipt checked at costco a big deal so that's definitely an approach.

The only reason I thought to ask was because their website said they had plenty in stock.

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.

As a result, despite being a non-shoplifter, I've become self-conscious whenever I go into a Target (which is pretty often, lately, for location convenience reasons), unlike most other stores.

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.

For example, take subtle signaling intended for shoplifters: it's not like shoplifters are the only ones who pick up on that. (Some people don't notice, but some people do.)

I thought Target was supposed to be like Walmart, but with more designer style, and relatively upscale pretense. Yet lately it's like they're insinuating that shoppers are in a bad neighborhood, that ordinary individual shoppers are suspect, and they've got their eye on you.

Anyone else see something like this at CVS?

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't hesitate to go there, because the clerk is always there to retrieve items behind the counter.

Go to Target, Home Depot, or CVS, and good luck finding anyone to help. I'm pushing a button and standing around helplessly, or asking a nearby employee who looks up quizzically and says "I don't have the key." 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.

Unlike tiny stores, big box stores are based on self service. Remove the self-service and the whole concept falls apart.

These blades must be held behind display cases because consumers would rather risk their honour than paying the deal.

Other products that are behind supermarket locked glass are alcohol bottles (overtly expensive poisonous water), perfume (ditto), and I don’t know what else.

So, at the end of the day, supermarket locked display cases show overtly expensive products which are not worth their money; so why bother?

Which I proceeded to checkout to buy, without incident.

I wonder if they later had some inventory issue. No I guess I don't wonder; that's all on them.

It's wild to me that someone would rather go back to their car, drive somewhere else, HOPE it'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're at. I'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.

My hunch is 2 things:

1) This is a case of "wishful" 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).

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.

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't wait.

As someone else said in another comment: "What people say they won't do and what they actually won't do are not the same thing"

I went home and ordered it online. With free shipping. It ended up being cheaper than the one in the store to boot.

Play stupid games, lose paying customers.

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't shop there. Goodbye.

> “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.”

Kind of disingenuous of CNN here to declare that a 20% reduction in mentions is equivalent with "vanishing".

That said, by the numbers here, it isn'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't need.

You'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.

To me, locking it up was _never_ about shoplifting, but about reducing customer service to it's bare minimum while still utilizing monopoly control and government interference and mismanagement to maintain a position without any actual competition.

I mean, who _else_ but someone unconcerned with competition would even _think_ to lock up their products, as an _opening move_?