Value Added Friction: A new way to look at Loss Prevention at Self-Checkout

After decades of weight-based security annoyance driving shoppers away from the SCO lane, retailers adopted the attitude that any friction at a SCO lane is ‘bad friction’.
As a result, retailers abandoned industry asset protection best practices in favour of amore utopian ideal of placing the customers experience above all else, including the bottom line.
The dream of ‘frictionless retail’ lexicon has further entrenched this belief that ‘friction’ is a vestigial leftover from legacy technologies; an analog idea with and has no place in a digital future.
Is this really true? Is all friction bad friction? What if there is a way to embrace friction as a necessary part of a dynamic self-service strategy?
In this talk we discuss the concept of Value-Added Friction and how retailers can change their relationship with checkout friction to find the balance between protecting assets while protecting the customer experience.