Emeritus Professor Adrian Beck spent his academic career in the criminology department at the University of Leicester in the UK, where he primarily focused on research on retail crime and shrinkage issues. He currently serves as an academic advisor and researcher for organizations like the ECR Community's Shrinkage and On-shelf Availability Group. Beck is a frequent speaker at loss prevention conferences worldwide and a contributor to LP Magazine's US and Europe publications. Beck can be reached at bna (at) le.ac.uk.
By Adrian Beck
The use of self-scan and checkout (SCO) technologies has grown considerably in the past fifteen years, predominately but not exclusively in the grocery sector, where customer and product volumes and space-utilization issues make them a particularly appealing proposition. For many retailers it has provided a significant opportunity to reduce their
By Adrian Beck
GS1 and the ECR Community Shrinkage and On-Shelf Availability Group commissioned a research study to look at 10 RFID case study companies.
By Adrian Beck
Interventions must be highly visible if they are to play a role in amplifying risk. There is no point in hiding it away or making it less than obvious to the would-be thief.
By Adrian Beck
Particular places, products, processes, and increasingly, certain retail innovations are much more vulnerable to loss than others.
By Adrian Beck
There is no agreed-upon definition of what constitutes “shrinkage.” Most estimates are based only upon measures of merchandise losses where the cause is unknown. The total retail loss concept offers a new definition of loss.
By Adrian Beck
There is little consensus on what constitutes “loss” within the retail world nor how it should be measured. The terms “shrinkage” and “shortage” have been loosely applied to encapsulate some of the areas that generate loss, but they are not terms enjoying a clear and agreed-upon definition across the sector.
By Adrian Beck
Since the term radio frequency identification (RFID) came into common usage within the retail environment, around the end of the 1990s, it has in many respects been an idea driven more by hope and hype than practical realization. For retailers, it promised a world where supply chains would become fully
By Adrian Beck
A 2016 report from the ECR Community’s Shrinkage and On-shelf Availability Group titled Amplifying Risk in Retail Stores offers a comprehensive review of the evidence to date on what is known about the various ways in which retailers try to discourage thieves from stealing from their stores, focusing particularly on increasing
By Adrian Beck
For the majority of retailers, loss is an inevitable part of doing business. What form this loss takes and, critically, how much it costs the business varies enormously depending upon the type of retailer and the quality of their operations. In addition, the customer experience is often heavily dependent upon
By Adrian Beck
For those of who have been in the loss prevention business for a number of years, you are surely familiar with the retail shrinkage life cycle illustrated in Figure 1. No doubt some of the businesses you have worked in have been around it a number of times.
It is a
