Survey Says 87% of Retail Stores May Move to Network Surveillance

January 12, 2011

A survey of retail companies says that 87% who currently use analog technology for surveillance are now considering migration strategies toward network video.

Results of the "Surveillance Survey Report" conducted by the Loss Prevention Research Council (LPRC) and sponsored by Axis, says that almost all companies (98%) claimed to currently use video surveillance in their stores, yet only 25% stated that they have already made the move to an all IP-based surveillance system. For those who have yet to adopt IP video technology, the number one reported obstacle to deployment was the perceived higher cost (41.7%).

For the survey, loss prevention executives from 49 national and regional retail companies answered a series of questions about their companies' use of video surveillance technology, their feelings on IP-based versus analog systems, the effects video surveillance has had on loss prevention, and their impressions of other possible uses of video surveillance beyond security and loss prevention, such as marketing and merchandising analytics.

Other survey results indicate that:

98% say that video surveillance reduced internal loss (employee theft, etc.);
75% claim that video surveillance reduced external loss (shoplifting, return fraud, etc.);
Of the respondents who indicated that poor image quality was one of the top four negative effects of video surveillance, 100% of them had analog technology as part of their system.
People counting is the most widely deployed non-LP analytic application, with 27% of responders currently running the application in the storeHot/Cold zones (13%);
Dwell time (13%) and Queue counters (10%) were other additional applications used by retailers today, with more than half of the respondents indicating that they would use these applications in the future if they are not today

"Our research indicates that retailers have plenty of opportunity to expand their surveillance systems to go far beyond loss prevention, especially if and when they switch to IP," said Dr. Read Hayes, director, LPRC. "It is great to see positive results from the overall effects of video surveillance regarding safety and crime prevention, but it's evident that the more areas of a retailer's business that can utilize video surveillance, the greater the ROI."

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