Supermarkets faced a significant increase in theft caused by self-checkout machines. With a 3.6 percent loss in sales, self-checkout machines are 16 times more likely to experience theft than traditional cashier lanes.
Grabango's report is a stark reminder of the financial toll this issue is taking on United States retailers, costing them USD 100 billion a year.
While shoplifting and employee theft account for two-thirds of this staggering amount, the remaining third is attributed to internal processing and control errors, which demand immediate attention.
Partial shrinking is the most common form of shoplifting, in which shoppers pay for part of their purchase but not the whole amount. Typical forms of this are customers scanning cheaper alternatives of self-serve items, such as replacing a Danish for a plain bread roll.
To combat this problem, Grabango has used computer vision to analyse nearly 5,000 retail transactions, comparing items customers picked up during their shopping trip with transaction data to see what was purchased.
"Shrink is a large and growing issue for grocery and convenience store retailers, but retailers can take action," said Will Glaser, Grabango's Founder and CEO.
"Grabango's checkout-free technology uses computer vision to eliminate shrink. Automated systems don't lie, steal, or discriminate. With Grabango, shoppers are charged exactly what they owe, no more and no less."
A supermarket can charge the accurate amount by tracking what shoppers pick up, preventing profit loss. Eliminating self-checkout shrinkage alone could increase grocery store bottom-line profits by more than 50% annually.
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