Business Opportunities Weblog

September 12, 2006 by Rich Whittle | 2 Comments

BusinessWeek Online:

There are 6 million video cameras mounted in stores across the U.S., according to market researcher J.P. Freeman Co. Their unblinking eyes are everywhere, watching exits and peering down aisles. You already knew that. But you probably had no idea how smart some of these cameras are getting.

Some stores have installed a system called the Video Investigator, whose advanced surveillance software can compare a shopper’s movements between video images and recognize unusual activity. Remove 10 items from a shelf at once, for instance, or open a case that’s normally kept closed and locked, and the system alerts guards sitting in a back room — or pacing the sales floor — with a chime or flashing screen. The system can predict where a shoplifter is likely to hide (at the ends of aisles, behind floor displays). A search function spots sudden movement that might indicate a large spill, prompting workers to clean up before it leads to a slip-and-fall accident and a costly lawsuit.

Store managers these days need all the high-tech help they can get. Increasingly, they’re under assault from organized gangs of professional shoplifters. These skilled thieves walk off with huge amounts of selected items and resell them at discounts. The pros are driving up losses dramatically, to $855 per shoplifting incident last year, from $265 in 2003, according to a survey by the University of Florida’s Center for Studies in Criminology and Law. All told, stores lost $30 billion to shoplifting and employee theft in 2005.

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In Psychology, Public Relations, Tools | 2 Comments