손실 예방 및 손실 탐지 시장 : 컴퓨터 비전, RFID, AI가 재정의하는 소매업 재편 대책

Inside This Report

This report details how retailers are modernizing their loss prevention solutions to more effectively prevent shrink while facing shifting shopping habits, greater adoption of self-service solutions and ongoing challenges with legacy solutions. At the heart of this is finding balance between customer experience and the shopping journey and the need to counter increasing levels of loss that cost retailers billions of dollars in revenue each year. Advances in AI and computer vision technologies and the expanding footprint of RFID in retail are among the key technology trends researched to support next-generation loss prevention solutions.

This in-depth report analyzes key strategic issues, both technological and operational, regarding loss prevention. VDC's research entailed detailed discussions with dozens of LP solution providers, plus a dedicated survey fielded among loss prevention technology decision makers across 180 retailers in North America and Europe. The report discusses ways in which RFID, artificial intelligence, computer vision / video monitoring, electronic article surveillance, and more technologies are advancing and being integrated, and retailers' expectations for investments and results.

What Questions are Addressed?

• What is the state of loss in retail today and how effective are retailers at addressing loss? From the retailer's perspective, what will their investment priorities be in the next two years? How does this differ by retail segment, such as apparel versus electronics versus grocery? In what ways are loss prevention solutions improving customers' shopping experiences?
• What are the leading and emerging loss prevention technologies and the strengths and weaknesses of each? How do these technologies align by store format and merchandise? What do loss prevention solutions do beyond loss prevention?
• From the retailer's perspective, what will their investment priorities be in the next two years? How does this differ by retail segment? How are retailers balancing customer experiences with loss prevention technology investments?
• What is the impact of self-service on shrink and how are successful retailers integrating loss with self- service solutions?
• How are improvements to inventory visibility impacting retailer loss prevention strategies and how are retailers leveraging recent RFID investments to better address loss?

Who Should Read this Report?

• Types of companies: Loss Prevention solution providers, POS hardware and software vendors, retail systems integrators, top tier retailers, retail industry trade associations and standard setters.
• Product Management, Directors of Strategy and Research, Marketing Communications professionals
• Corporate development and merger and acquisition professionals seeking a comprehensive understanding of the landscape of loss prevention
• Strategic Aliance and Channel Development managers

Organizations Covered in this Report:

Executive Summary

Retail shrink and in-store violence levels remain elevated across most store formats throughout North America and Europe. While retail decision maker strategies on how to best address shrink have evolved, many investments have backfired and significantly eroded the shopper experience. What has improved is retailers' ability to more accurately measure events; for example, by leveraging increasingly ubiquitous RFID solutions as a forensics tool to investigate patterns and deter internal and external loss. This research report is designed to measure the state of loss in retail today in the wake of heightened organized crime, expansive self-service solution deployment and shifting shopping habits and assess how retailers are evolving their approach and technology investment priorities to enhance monitoring capabilities, eliminate shopper friction while ultimately reducing shrink. Backed by a dedicated survey conducted among retail loss prevention decision makers across multiple retail categories and in-depth interviews with leading and emerging solution providers, the report addresses the key factors shaping this market moving forward.

According to VDC's research, in 2024 retailers incurred an average of 2% of shrink (as measured as a percentage of retail sales) with convenience/pharmacies and grocery/supermarket the leading retail segments. For 2025, however, retailers are projecting a substantial drop in shrink with average anticipated losses of 1.7%. Considering average US retail sales of $5.25 trillion in 2024, this drop represents a $15.8 billion benefit to retailers. While this is potentially a byproduct of increased loss prevention technology investments - 2025 budgets increased by an average of 6.9% - other contributing factors include the evolving loss prevention technology stack, retailers adapting to changes to shopping habits and policy shifts.

AI and computer vision innovation and advances with more mature solutions and those in the process of scaling are redefining the loss prevention technology stack. EAS and video integrations are becoming more commonplace, tying alarms to product and location to accelerate case resolution. In addition, RFID's scaling footprint in segments like apparel and general merchandise is opening the door to new applications such as its use to provide the definitive inventory ground truth and its utility to investigate patterns. In fact, over nine in ten retailers agreed that real-time inventory visibility (provided by solutions like RFID) was extremely or somewhat important to support loss prevention strategies.

Key Findings:

• Retailers address self-service vulnerability and retrench self-checkout policies. With growing labor cost and availability challenges, retailers are increasingly turning to self-service solutions to support customers. Over 60% of retail research respondents acknowledge that they currently have or plan to implement self-service solutions. However, just over 30% of retailers claim that self-service solutions (such as self-checkout) have had a significant or severe impact on shrink levels. Leading issues with self-checkout solutions include label switching (24.5%) and hiding one item behind another (23.8%). To address self-checkout impacted shrink, retailers are turning to computer vision and AI solutions to better detect missed scans and to visually confirm item identity. Leading retailers are pairing policy (item limits) with vision-assisted exception handling.
• Returns fraud is a major challenge for retailers and in many ways the new battlefield. Approximately 15% of returns are fraudulent (with online returns a greater issue). Thus, omni-channel returns and BORIS/BOPIS workflows becoming an increasingly critical loss prevention consideration.
• Labor shortages accelerating self-service investments; however, limiting retailer loss prevention goals. Almost one in four retailers agree that labor shortages have had a significant and/or a severe impact preventing loss prevention. In fact, retailers cite employee training and awareness programs and customer engagement tactics as among the most effective loss prevention measures. To counter labor challenges, retailers have turned to increased loss prevention technology investments and re- focusing staff at higher rick times and locations.
• Leading loss contributors are varied, requiring a multi-faceted approach by retailers to address. The top three contributors to inventory shrink include administrative/process errors (23.0%), opportunistic shoplifting (21.7%) and employee theft (20.4%). It is noteworthy that organized retail crime is not a "top three" rated contributor.
• RFID's retail value proposition continues to evolve and is becoming the source of truth supporting monitoring and loss detection solutions. Inventory visibility and accuracy remain a key challenge for retailers with more than three in ten retailers claiming moderately accurate, slightly accurate or inaccurate inventory visibility. RFID has become the de facto technology retailers turn to for greater (real time) in-store inventory visibility and over nine in ten agree that there is strong value integrating RFID inventory management solutions with loss prevention platforms.

Table of Contents

Executive

Summary Key

Findings

The Evolution of Loss Prevention

• Challenges Faced by Retailers
  • Retailers' Technology Developments
  • Real-Time Visibility of Losses and Inventory
  • The Evolution of Buying and Selling Loss Prevention

Loss Prevention in the Current Retail Environment

• Current Retailer Technology and Operational Developments
• Loss Prevention versus Loss Detection
• Loss Detection as a Critical Component of Retailers'
• Loss Strategies Loss Intelligence and Recovery
• Loss Strategies
• Challenges Faced by Retailers

The Impact of Self-Service on Loss Prevention

• SCO Implementation and Loss
• Retailers' Countermeasures to SCO Shrink
• Technical Limitations Impacting LP for SCO

The Current Landscape of Loss Prevention Technologies

• Video- and Artificial Intelligence-Based Loss Prevention Solutions
• RFID-Based Loss Prevention Solutions
  • RFID as Electronic Article
  • Surveillance RFID and Self-Checkout
  • RFID and RF Tag Options
  • RFID and Returns Management
  • RFID for Apparel and Other Retail Segments
  • RFID and RF for Retail Segments other than Apparel
• Additional LP Technologies
  • Facial recognition
  • Digimarc
• LP System Design
  • Design for Customer
  • Experience Design for Intervention
  • Cloud versus Edge Processing
  • Software

Competitive Landscape and Vendor Profiles:

Report Exhibits

• Exhibit 1: The Cost of Loss: Loss as a Percent of Retail Sales
• Exhibit 2: Retailer Investment Priorities for Loss Prevention
• Exhibit 3: How Will Retailers Change Their Loss Prevention Strategies?
• Exhibit 4: The Importance of Real-time Inventory Visibility
• Exhibit 5: Current Inventory Visibility
• Exhibit 6: Largest Sources of Loss
• Exhibit 7: The Impact of Labor Shortages on Loss Prevention
• Exhibit 8: 2024 Budget Allocations for Loss Prevention Technologies
• Exhibit 9: 2025 Changes to Budget Allocations for Loss Prevention
• Exhibit 10: RFID Reader Form Factors and Locations
• Exhibit 11: Self-Checkout Implementation and Loss
• Exhibit 12: Current Countermeasures to SCO Shrink
• Exhibit 13: Effectiveness of Loss Prevention Measures
• Exhibit 14: Retailer Reasons for Adopting RFID
• Exhibit 15: The Value of Integrating RFID with Loss Prevention
• Exhibit 16: The Benefits of Integrating RFID with Loss Prevention Solutions
• Exhibit 17: Integration of RFID with Electronic Article Surveillance
• Exhibit 18: The Impact of Loss Prevention on Customers' Experiences

Excel Dataset Exhibits / VDC Survey of Retailers

Responses to the following survey questions, cross-tabulated by 7 retail segments (apparel, convenience, department, electronics, grocery, general merchandise and specialty:

• 1. On a scale of 1 (Not a priority) to 5 (Critical priority), how would you rate the priority of investing in each of the following loss prevention technologies for your organization in the next 1-2 years?
• 2. Which of the following loss prevention solutions have you already implemented, and which do you plan to implement in your stores?
• 3. How effective have the following loss prevention measures been for your organization in reducing theft and shrink? (Rate each on a 5-point scale: 1 = Not effective, 5 = Very effective, or mark "Not used" if not applicable.)
• 4. How effective is your organization at addressing retail loss/shrink?
• 5. Looking ahead, do you anticipate making any significant changes to your loss prevention strategy in the next 1-2 years? (multiselect)
• 6. To what extent have labor shortages or staffing constraints affected your ability to prevent losses in stores?
• 7. Which approaches are you using to maintain loss prevention coverage despite staffing shortages? (multiselect)
• 8. What impact does your organization's LP strategy have on customer experience/convenience?
• 9. Approximately what percent of retail inventory was lost to shrink in 2024 (measured as a percent of retail sales)?
• 10. Approximately what percent of retail inventory do you estimate will be lost to shrink in 2025 (measured as a percent of retail sales)?
• 11. Which of the following do you perceive as the largest contributors to shrink (losses) in your organization over the past year? (multiselect)
• 12. Considering your organization's overall retail technology budget, what share was attributed to loss prevention technology investments in 2024?
• 13. Relative to 2024, is your organization's LP budget increasing, decreasing or staying the same in 2025?
• 14. Does your organization currently support self-checkout solutions (such as SCO lanes, personal shopping devices, smart carts, etc.)?
• 15. How have self-checkout solutions affected your store's shrink levels and theft incidents?
• 16. What specific loss prevention challenges have you encountered with self-checkout or other self-service models? (multiselect)
• 17. How is your organization addressing self-checkout loss/shrink issues? (multiselect)
• 18. How important is real-time inventory visibility and accuracy to support your LP strategies?
• 19. How would you describe your organization's current in-store inventory visibility?
• 20. Does your organization currently use item-level RFID solutions to support greater in-store inventory visibility?
• 21. What are your organization's primary RFID investment drivers? (multiselect)
• 22. Do you see value in integrating RFID inventory management solutions with LP platforms to provide greater visibility into shrink and theft events?
• 23. Is your organization currently leveraging RFID investments/solutions to support LP strategies?
• 24. How/where is RFID tagged merchandise currently being read and how do you plan to read RFID tagged merchandise currently? (multiselect)
• 25. How/where is RFID tagged merchandise currently being read and how do you plan to read RFID tagged merchandise over the next 24 months? (multiselect)
• 26. What are the leading benefits of combining RFID-enabled inventory visibility with LP solutions? (multiselect)
• 27. What are your views on RFID relative to EAS (electronic article surveillance) solutions? (multiselect)