BOB items are frequently overlooked or forgotten at checkout. Many factors contribute to this problem:
- A long line of impatient shoppers
- Pressures on cashiers to increase throughput
- Distracted cashiers or customers
- Customer intent or cashier collusion
An independent mystery shopping study spanning nearly 500 stores and 25 chains demonstrated that when shoppers
attempted to leave a store without paying for BOB items, they were successful 62% of the time.
Recent data from the 2008 Supermarket Security and Loss Prevention Survey, produced by the Food Marketing Institute, indicates that employee front-end theft accounts for 50% of total in-store shrink.
BOB shrink is particularly hard on a store's margins since a single BOB item can often run $10 or more – for example, a 12-pack of paper towels, a large pack of diapers, or a large box of laundry detergent. Just a single loss per lane per day can drive millions of dollars of annual profit loss for a large grocery chain.
Numerous attempts have been made over the years to combat this problem, from cashier training, lane redesign and mirrors, to video and infrared sensors. The common problem with these efforts however, is that they can't integrate with the POS. They can't recognize what the BOB item is and link it to the item's UPC. That means they can't ring up items before they're lost, they can't deter collusion, and they can't stop cashiers from ignoring that an item is on the bottom of the cart.
Results of "Mystery Shopping"
With "traditional" detection devices including mirrors, stickers, video devices and infrared sensors, BOB loss was statistically similar to having no detection device at all.
