“Frictionless retail” has become a popular buzzword, often championed by industry influencers as a desirable objective, if not the primary objective of retail. Eliminating all barriers, complexities, and delays in the shopping process may be appealing, but in the real world, eliminating retail friction is as realistic as eradicating crime. Human nature, differences in consumer preference, and the nature of our society mean that retail friction will always exist. More importantly, a world completely without retail friction is undesirable for retailers and consumers.
Instead of pursuing this unachievable goal and making business decisions that maximize one piece of the equation, retailers should focus on understanding and strategically using retail friction to enhance the shopping experience, improve business outcomes, and ensure security and efficiency. This article will explore why frictionless retail is normal, natural, and even desirable and how embracing efficient friction can lead to more effective and profitable retail strategies. In other words, the entire point of this article is to argue that eliminating friction should not be the goal—using friction efficiently should be.
Understanding Retail Friction: Friction (Like Beauty) Is in the Eye of the Beholder
It is important to define “retail friction” as a starting point. Retail friction encompasses any difficulties, delays, or challenges customers encounter during their shopping journey that complicate or slow down the purchase process.
However, this definition is problematic because different individuals experience friction differently, depending on their circumstances, perceptions, and desires. For example, shoppers’ experiences with and perceptions of self-checkout systems can differ dramatically based on generational differences, geographic location, and personal preferences. Some customers view self‑checkout as a convenient and efficient option, while others see self-checkout systems as confusing, frustrating, and job-eliminating technology. This is just one example, but there are many others—for example, sales staff can be helpful in some circumstances, while in others they are just a nuisance.
The point is that what one shopper perceives as friction, another might see as a helpful feature or a necessary part of the shopping process. In other words, retail friction is in the eye of the beholder. Clearly, reducing friction can be achieved by knowing your customer base and providing them with options to shop the way they want. However, perfect knowledge is impossible because customer profiles are constantly changing.
The Value of Retail Friction
The definition of retail friction is not the only problem with criticisms. Another major problem with broad criticisms of retail friction is that friction often offers many benefits. I firmly believe that the most effective retail leaders will be distinguished by their ability to find innovative ways to leverage potential friction points for the company’s benefit. Much of this article is dedicated to using friction in wiser and more efficient ways.
Contrary to the negative connotations often associated with the term “friction,” certain types of retail friction can actually be beneficial for both consumers and retailers. When used strategically, friction can enhance the shopping experience, drive sales, and support loss prevention efforts.
Strategic Merchandising and Store Design: A store layout encouraging exploration can lead to product discoveries, where customers find products they didn’t initially intend to buy. Additionally, staples are often placed in areas of the store where customers are forced to travel and pass by other merchandise they might desire. This kind of friction can increase overall sales by exposing shoppers to a broader range of products.
Inconsistent Pricing: “Sales pricing” is, by definition, inconsistent pricing, and inconsistent pricing is a source of retail friction. Sales pricing forces shoppers to spend additional time understanding the prices offered by different retailers or even different locations within the same retail company. Some retailers have historically reduced this friction by only having a few prices throughout their organization (e.g., dollar stores). However, this isn’t an option for most retailers who cannot manage inventory without sales.
These examples demonstrate that friction is not inherently harmful; when applied strategically, it can enhance the retail experience, increase sales, and support a variety of business objectives. However, loss prevention—a fundamental piece of retail—also relies on the strategic use of retail friction.
Clearly, we do not want individuals just taking products without paying for them. Believe it or not, having walls around your store, and thus your products, creates friction by channeling customers to specific entry and exit points. In other words, we would not need walls if not for risks to assets.
A world without walls is something that only John Lennon would “imagine,” or some bright-eyed, overpaid consultant who does not worry himself with the pesky nature of reality and human nature. The importance of walls seems obvious, but given some recent ideas, I would not be surprised if the next buzzy suggestion was that retailers tear them down. Clearly, there were innovative e-commerce geniuses who said, “Let’s get rid of stores,” but walls are a pretty essential feature of brick-and-mortar retail.
Nevertheless, many of the most effective loss prevention solutions are effective precisely because they create friction. Unfortunately, they are not only effective at preventing loss—they are also effective at preventing sales, and retailers’ primary goal is to sell stuff. We need to find ways to deal with this reality, but first, it will be helpful to review a few key concepts.
Rational Choice and Techniques of Situational Crime Prevention and Sales Promotion
Within the Loss Prevention Research Council (LPRC), we rely heavily on three situational crime prevention techniques—these strategies were developed by the criminologist Ronald Clarke. For this article, we will focus on three of the techniques. According to this perspective, retail crime can be prevented if retailers:
- Increase the perceived time and effort required to commit a crime
- Increase the perceived risks (e.g., criminal penalties) associated with committing crimes
- Reduce the perceived benefits associated with crime
Situational crime prevention is based on rational choice theory, which suggests that individuals will engage in behaviors when the perceived benefits of an action exceed the perceived costs of that action. Therefore, situational crime prevention suggests that to deter theft, we should make it harder to steal, ensure that crimes are prosecuted and punished to the greatest extent possible, and reduce the benefits of crime as much as possible.
One of the great things about situational crime prevention and other approaches based on rational choice theory is that they can be flipped on their head to achieve positive outcomes. For example, to help generate sales, retailers need to:
- Reduce the perceived time and effort required to make a purchase
- Reduce the perceived risks (i.e., negative consequences) of making a purchase
- Enhance the perceived benefits of making a purchase
Clearly, perspectives, intentions, and situations matter when discussing rational choices. But this theme is similar to something I mentioned earlier—friction is in the eye of the beholder. Therefore, as true business partners, LP leaders should focus on creating situations that offenders will perceive as too costly to commit a crime but that customers will not perceive as too costly to make a purchase.
Green and Red Math
At the LPRC, we refer to individuals who are in retail stores for legitimate purposes as “green” guests or place users (e.g., shoppers, workers, etc.) and those who are in retail stores for illegitimate purposes (e.g., crime) as “red” guests or place users. To better understand rational choice theory as it applies to retail, consider crimes and purchases as transactions with inputs and outputs.
During a purchase, customers make the following trade: Time + effort + product price + opportunity costs + any risks + all other transactional costs = merchandise.
During an act of theft, offenders make the following trade: Time + effort + risk of negative consequences + opportunity costs + all other transaction costs = merchandise.
The first important point is that the equations are nearly the same, except that the purchase price is not a part of the offender’s transaction. The second important point is that the costs for the criminal transaction are qualitatively different from those associated with a purchase.
For example, the risk associated with my impulse purchase of a large mobile workbench is a possibly irritated wife. Alternatively, the risks associated with crime include outcomes like incarceration. Because the risks of crime and transactions differ, the strategies to mitigate those risks are also different.
There are many things I might do to minimize the likelihood of an irritated wife (many of which have their own risks); however, one of the most important things an offender can do is protect their anonymity. If they cannot be identified, then it will be challenging to investigate and prosecute them. Therefore, they will put additional time and effort into protecting their anonymity and will be more averse to willingly giving up their identity.
These realizations occurred when I began researching the effectiveness of self-service locking cases. These cases require that individuals exchange personally identifiable information for self-service access to locked merchandise. The brilliance of this solution is that, because friction is in the eye of the beholder, this will be a much greater price to pay for the offender than the customer. In other words, this transaction will have less impact on people with nothing to hide. This leads us to broader ideas around friction efficiency.
From Frictionless to Friction-Efficient Retail
Efficiency is defined as the ability to achieve the greatest outcomes with the least amount of input. Therefore, retail friction efficiency is achieving the greatest operational outcomes while minimizing friction for green place users, including shoppers, workers, managers, and everyone else in a retail location for legitimate purposes.
There are many strategies retailers can use to be more friction-efficient, and the effective loss prevention leader will focus on maximizing friction efficiency. Retailers already do this, but they may not think about it because they take friction for granted. For example, because walls are a feature of brick-and‑mortar retail, customers are channeled through doors. Therefore, merchants and marketers have an opportunity to ensure that everyone who passes through those doors is exposed to specific products, thus driving sales. Furthermore, this channeling creates spaces that can be sold to brands.
In other words, effective retail leaders must realize that friction is inevitable, find ways to minimize it wherever they can, and squeeze the value out of any friction they cannot eliminate. Unfortunately, the amount of friction that can be eliminated will differ according to store risk because some stores will not have products on the shelves if they do not rely on friction.
Rather than striving for an unattainable ideal of frictionless retail, the focus should shift toward optimizing retail friction—making it as efficient and effective as possible. This approach involves several key concepts and strategies:
- Friction Reduction: Even though frictionless retail is a pipedream that has cost retailers billions in losses, reducing friction to the greatest extent possible should remain a key objective in most cases. However, reducing or increasing friction without considering its effects on the rest of the business is not wise. Unfortunately, many retailers have made decisions where they sacrificed other business objectives at the altar of a buzzword.
- Leveraged Friction: Leveraged friction involves using friction to achieve other organizational objectives. This friction could be unavoidable, but it could also be purposeful. Nevertheless, leveraged friction is probably the most important strategy because it relates to all the others listed below. In fact, I have already described many examples of leveraged friction throughout this article (e.g., strategic merchandising, store design, and marketing).
If you are forced to use locking cases throughout your store because your organization has chosen to operate where fundamental sources of social control have completely fallen apart, then take this as an opportunity. You may have at least two technologies at your disposal—a locking case, and possibly a call button—but you may also have an enhanced public view monitor (ePVM) on the same aisle. Guests will be standing at a locking case because they are interested in the product. If I must explain what an ideal situation this is to upsell guests with targeted marketing and promotions through signage, audio, and possibly video, then you probably shouldn’t be working in retail. If life gives you lemons, make lemonade (and sell it).
Similarly, enhanced public view monitors (ePVMs) are in many stores. However, these glowing rectangles are typically underutilized. Let’s break this down—retailers have a TV screen with the ability to detect when someone is standing in front of it and are not using at least part of the screen for marketing—why not?! Of course, there are challenges associated with technical integration and incorporating these into impression management programs, but, for the most part, we are not talking about groundbreaking technologies that we still need to figure out.
As a final example of how to leverage unavoidable friction, let’s think about EAS tags. Removing EAS tags at the register generates friction, because it increases checkout time for customers due to the additional work cashiers must do. If EAS tags are applied to merchandise, then the customer is likely buying valuable merchandise. This customer (and every other) may be ideal for rewards programs, store credit, or other promotions so this might be a good time to have them sign up for these programs. If someone is buying a lot of products with tags, that provides an opportunity to discuss multiple programs and promotions.
The critical point is that, by using friction strategically, retailers can offset the costs of green guest friction and drive value for both consumers and the business.
- Targeted Friction: Targeted friction involves applying friction selectively, focusing on red guests while minimizing the impact on green guests. Examples include requiring customers to join a loyalty program to access certain features like self-checkout or implementing self-service locking cases that require customers to exchange personally identifiable information to access locked merchandise. These measures increase transaction costs for red guests more than for green guests, making it harder for offenders to operate without raising suspicion.
However, targeted friction also includes knowing your red and green guests and using this information to achieve business goals. If I can detect the red guests’ presence (or behaviors indicative of criminal intentions), I can use appropriate strategies to actively deter them. Alternatively, if the individual is known to be violent, we can get employees out of their way and call law enforcement. Similarly, if we can detect green guests or purchase intent, then we can use this information to sell.
Admittedly, we will have to get better at detecting both green guest and red guest opportunities in physical retail. However, an increasing number of technologies will enable us to better understand customer traffic and trends in ways that respect personally identifiable information. Unfortunately, many essential technologies are used primarily (or only) for loss prevention purposes.
- Friction Shift: The concept of friction shift involves removing friction from the green guest experience and applying it to the red guest experience after they have committed their offense. Instead of using visible security measures like locking cases, retailers might invest more in investigations and ensuring offenders are prosecuted. In other words, this approach shifts the burden of friction onto the red guests, reducing the impact on green guests and maintaining a positive shopping environment.
There are many viable strategies for increasing the likelihood that offenders will be investigated, apprehended, prosecuted, rehabilitated, or incapacitated through the criminal justice system. Unfortunately, there are limits to this because retailers do not control the criminal justice system, and retail crime receives little focus in areas where social control and order have broken down.
If Life Gives You Lemons, Squeeze Every Bit of Value Out of Them to Maximize Profit
The purpose of this article is to emphasize that friction is inevitable but can be minimized or leveraged to achieve other business objectives. It’s important to recognize that almost nothing in the physical world is truly frictionless. The only situations that even approach eliminating friction in the physical world occur under extreme or theoretical conditions, and the same is true of retail friction.
I have proposed some strategies that retailers already use and should continue to use. Loss prevention leaders should also apply these concepts as they build their business cases and obtain buy‑in from business partners. There are certainly many other ways to leverage friction across the enterprise to benefit every aspect of the business. We must continue to understand this within the loss prevention community.
The pursuit of a frictionless retail experience is not only impractical but also counterproductive. Eliminating all friction would require drastic measures undermining the very nature of retail as we know it. For instance, to achieve true frictionless-ness, retailers would need to abolish brick-and-mortar stores (because these have walls and doors), fire their sales staff (because these can be an annoyance to some customers), and offer only one product to avoid the “friction” of customer choice. This hypothetical scenario highlights the absurdity of the frictionless ideal and underscores the importance of friction in creating a functional and engaging retail environment.
Retailers should focus on managing friction to align with their business objectives and enhance the customer experience. This means accepting that some level of friction is inevitable and even beneficial. By strategically applying and managing friction, retailers can create a secure and engaging shopping environment—that is ultimately more profitable.