Walmart stores in the Greater Vancouver area of Canada do not have a button. A customer wanting to buy baby formula has to walk around the store to find a staff member who might know some other staff member who has the key.
The customer is then required to be accompanied by the staff member to the nearest cashier to immediately pay for the item before continuing shopping.
Honestly, just steal Japan's approach and replace your aisles with vending machines at that point.
Of course, A) the density is going to be worse, particularly for awkwardly shaped objects, and B) that feels extremely unwelcoming.
But at the point that you're locking everything up and making customers show ID to get things, you're still adding friction for the consumers, this mostly reduces friction for the staff in the longer term once it's normalized - by which I mean, lets them fire more staff.
Really, at the point where you're doing this, it'd be much simpler to just have entire locked off sections of the store where you show ID once to get in, rather than individual shelves.
Of course, at that point, you'll see a drop in sales of anything in there, for everyone who didn't bring their phone or setup the app...I just suspect it'll be less than the drop for having individual shelves that require unlocking.
(I also claim that it's a lie that this is purely or even primarily theft deterrence, given the number of times I've seen stores put non-store-brand versions of things behind them and leave the store brand ones out.)
Target's urban stores deal with this by locking up the merchandise and recommending that people order online for pickup, so the employees do most of the work and your goods are ready about the same time as you would have been leaving the store anyways.
It's annoying if you don't know exactly what you want to buy, but it works well if you do.
Both a Walmart and a Target near me recently moved large portions of their inventories to locked cases. I was told by workers there it was due to the massive shoplifting caused by an increase in homeless/addict population combined with laws preventing store security from effectively blocking shoplifters.
The "abolish the police" movement did not manage to actually abolish the police, but it did drastically decrease enforcement and prosecution of crimes perceived as minor or petty, like shoplifting. Police are not eager to try to enforce the law against it when they risk getting crucified if any encounter goes wrong and the suspect is likely to be released immediately due to bail reform and get their charges dropped.
I think a reduction in penalties for shoplifting is also probably at play. Decades ago some areas had whatever demographics you are probably referring to and at that time they didn’t lock stuff up there (IME anyway).
Walmart stores in the Greater Vancouver area of Canada do not have a button. A customer wanting to buy baby formula has to walk around the store to find a staff member who might know some other staff member who has the key.
The customer is then required to be accompanied by the staff member to the nearest cashier to immediately pay for the item before continuing shopping.
its like this in all of Canada
[dead]
I guess this more of US and big cities issue. No locked things where I live except anti-theft thingies on red caviar and Gillette razors.
Honestly, just steal Japan's approach and replace your aisles with vending machines at that point.
Of course, A) the density is going to be worse, particularly for awkwardly shaped objects, and B) that feels extremely unwelcoming.
But at the point that you're locking everything up and making customers show ID to get things, you're still adding friction for the consumers, this mostly reduces friction for the staff in the longer term once it's normalized - by which I mean, lets them fire more staff.
Really, at the point where you're doing this, it'd be much simpler to just have entire locked off sections of the store where you show ID once to get in, rather than individual shelves.
Of course, at that point, you'll see a drop in sales of anything in there, for everyone who didn't bring their phone or setup the app...I just suspect it'll be less than the drop for having individual shelves that require unlocking.
(I also claim that it's a lie that this is purely or even primarily theft deterrence, given the number of times I've seen stores put non-store-brand versions of things behind them and leave the store brand ones out.)
Target's urban stores deal with this by locking up the merchandise and recommending that people order online for pickup, so the employees do most of the work and your goods are ready about the same time as you would have been leaving the store anyways.
It's annoying if you don't know exactly what you want to buy, but it works well if you do.
I read an interesting book about the development of the modern supermarket - and this was actually the norm for the early 20th century!
The wheel of time is funny.
This is a change from how they used to operate.
What changed?
Both a Walmart and a Target near me recently moved large portions of their inventories to locked cases. I was told by workers there it was due to the massive shoplifting caused by an increase in homeless/addict population combined with laws preventing store security from effectively blocking shoplifters.
The "abolish the police" movement did not manage to actually abolish the police, but it did drastically decrease enforcement and prosecution of crimes perceived as minor or petty, like shoplifting. Police are not eager to try to enforce the law against it when they risk getting crucified if any encounter goes wrong and the suspect is likely to be released immediately due to bail reform and get their charges dropped.
> What changed?
Demographics.
I think a reduction in penalties for shoplifting is also probably at play. Decades ago some areas had whatever demographics you are probably referring to and at that time they didn’t lock stuff up there (IME anyway).