LITTLE ROCK — Harps Food Stores Inc., the 65-store regional grocery chain based in Springdale, says it has installed video recognition technology aimed at reducing theft at checkout by shoppers and, in some cases, its own cashiers.
The StopLift Checkout Vision Systems is designed to monitor store checkout lanes and record whether items are intentionally or accidentally bypassing scanning registers.
“It’s eyes when you’re not looking. It’s a good tool, a lot of information,” said John Rinks, district manager, security, for Harps.
Rinks said the company first tested the system in November 2010. In May of last year, it added more of the systems in eastern Oklahoma, central and eastern Arkansas and southeast Missouri.
The company is now in its third phase, installing the system in 11 more stores within the next couple of weeks.
Video monitors placed over the checkout lanes record all transactions, counting the number of items in carts. If that number matches the number of items scanned, nothing happens.
If the numbers don’t match, the system generates a report.
“Stores know they’re getting robbed blind,” said Sherry Alpert, a spokesman for StopLift. “This happens at every grocery store in the country.”
Calling attention to the new theft prevention technology sends a message, she said, that “we don’t tolerate theft.”
The National Association for Shoplifting Prevention, based in Melville, N.Y., says more than $13 billion worth of merchandise is stolen from retailers each year, or about $35 million a day. The association is a nonprofit research group.
The association says its research shows shoplifters steal from all types of stores, including thrift shops, and that there is no profile of a “typical” shoplifter. Men and women are about equally likely to shoplift, the association says.
A key purpose of the monitoring system, StopLift says, is to cut down the instances of “sweethearting,” in which cashiers purposely bypass price scanners for family members or friends.
In other cases, however, cashiers did not see bottomof-the-basket items such as cases of water, bags of potatoes or boxes of diapers, and the shoppers failed to bring the items to the cashiers’ attention.
“The fact is, a lot of items walk out of the store that way,” Alpert said.
According to the company, the theft-prevention system emerged from a Harvard Business School field study on retail loss prevention, also called Project StopLift. Development of the system also drew on engineering and computer vision research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Business, Pages 23 on 04/18/2012