Members of the Loss Prevention Research Council (LPRC) invite retailers and solutions providers to join its Benefit Denial Working Group (BDWG) to develop and test product protection solutions.

The working group is comprised of more than 12 leading retail chains, including Best Buy, Walmart, OfficeMax and Lowes Home Improvement.

The LPRC team is focused on the study and trial deployment of new technologies that render products useless until they are tendered properly at the point of sale. “Group members have defined benefit denial as a system or technology designed into, or applied to retail products that prevents anyone from gaining the value or use of the product without first making a legitimate purchase,” explains Read Hayes, Ph.D., director of the LPRC. “The system or technology should protect the product from point of manufacture throughout the entire supply chain, and have no real negative impact on the consumer.”

LPRC says the technologies have the potential to revolutionize asset protection by virtually “locking down” products throughout the supply chain. The group says that such protection would enable retailers to more openly merchandise products, resulting in increased availability to customers, and ultimately, higher sales, while at the same time minimizing loss from shrink.

Other areas that will be evaluated include the impact on store operations associated with modifying or eliminating physical lock packaging or enclosures and streamlining the checkout process.

The trials will be designed to encompass a wide variety of product categories, benefit denial technologies and store formats in order to develop a comprehensive database of best practices and insights for the industry.

For more information, contact Dr. Hayes at read@lpresearch.org