Retail Detail
Funny how things evolve all around us: imperceptibly. The market economy works a lot like living organisms, with Darwinian natural selection sorting out good and bad designs, eliminating ideas that have become obsolete or aren’t feasible.
Over a century ago, retail shopping wasn’t self-service. You went to a store and told the clerk what you wanted. The clerk put the order together for you from behind the counter and handed you your merchandise after you paid. Then along came the innovator Clarence Saunders in 1916 in Memphis, Tennessee. Through his new Piggly Wiggly store, he introduced customers to self-service shopping. Shoppers entered the store through aisles of stocked shelves through a turnstile, collected their wares, and paid at a point of sale on the way out. It was revolutionary. The format made petty theft a bit easier than before, but the reduced labor costs of no longer having clerks pick the orders made up for the difference.
Memories of this history were inspired by commenter Josh’s link to a story suggesting this innovation may have reached its apogee. CNN spots early signs of a trend at Chicago-area Walgreens stores, where the new method of fighting shoplifting and organized theft is to put most of the merchandise out of sight and reach of shoppers.
The new Walgreens store now has only two aisles for shoppers to peruse for their everyday needs, such as over-the-counter medication, bath and body care supplies, batteries, Band-aids, and grab-and-go snacks.
Most everything else you expect you find at the drugstore chain is kept in an in-store fulfillment area, which is off-limits to shoppers.
This makes sense in many ways. The national trend in municipal policing reflects the modern trends in elite political tastes, according to which property crime and theft are no longer to be considered crimes at all. Progressive urban elites do not consider it fashionable to prosecute such infractions, which means that these behaviors are rewarded, increasing their cost. The next logical step is for self-service retail shopping to revert to the curated experience that it was over a century ago. Darwinian selection will eventually produce a store design that improves profitability by reducing losses from things like theft.
The CNN story also describes interesting facets of modern socio-psychology. No one in the retail industry wants to admit publicly that the decriminalization of shoplifting and rampant organized crime activity have anything to do with this throwback.
The [new curated Walgreens] is one-of-a-kind. The retailer said the concept is testing a different version of convenience that’s adapted for the way consumers are shopping now, including self checkout and online order/store pickup. The redesign was not done as an anti-theft measure, according to the retailer.
Perhaps the wealthy progressive shareholders with corporate voting rights need to be assuaged that the company’s actions aren’t associated with unfashionable ideology. You can’t have crime without implying the existence of criminals. Therefore, it is best not to mention crime—even if that means not prosecuting it.
Self-checkout at retail stores has expanded for a variety of reasons over the past decade, including labor shortages and rising labor costs. Meanwhile, the self-checkout trend has facilitated shoplifting. This has occurred as self-service retail outlets have faced competition with online retailers who don’t suffer losses from customer thefts, because shoppers don’t wander around Amazon or Overstock’s fulfillment warehouses unsupervised, for instance. We have all noticed the change at the local Kroger’s or Walmart where order pickers gather merchandise to fulfill orders from online shoppers.
While some retailers charge more for the convenience of having order pickers do the shopping, they also provide online customers with closer parking privileges and a quicker turnaround time. Drawing a straight line based on those trends, it seems we should expect retailers to prefer online shoppers entirely in the future, and give them certain discounts to reflect the lower losses from petty theft. Straight-line extrapolations are often misleading, of course—until today’s retail innovators discover the trend is the route to greater profitability.
Has anyone "seen" Jack" lately? I know I wasn't on a couple of days and he may have posted then, but, I haven't seen him lately.
Afternoon all...
I do more shopping online than not...there are some things I need to go to a particular store for, but that is mostly unique things at drug stores at Christmas time or Wrapping supplies etc...lol
It has been a wild life sighting bonanza for me this week...Tuesday I saw a new feral cate...what they refer to as a "tortoise shell " cat, cool markings and they are always female. She is very pretty . I also saw a bunny in the yard at work, small mammals are scarce for sighting during the day around here, I suspect due to the Eagles...but, it was cool to see the bunny. This morning on the way to work, a doe and her calf were crossing the road the mom had already reached safety on the side of the road, the fawn was still coming, but, I would have been able to stop if I needed to....way cool
Today is Foam Party Day ( something I didn't know existed, looks like fun), Smile Power Day and Megalodon Day ( way cool dinosaur, though all dinosaurs are cool), he is the largest water based one, and ginormous...he is featured in the last Jurassic Park movie, before the new one came out. He eats a genetically modified T-Rex type dinosaur, forget it's name, but it is scarier than the T-Rex.