Sports Direct and Zara are among the numerous retail stores in the United Kingdom that are installing innovative tech solutions to minimize store theft losses; using facial recognition software to smart retail displays to prevent and tackle theft.
British Retail Consortium Annual Crime Survey for 2022 reveals that 60 of retailers said theft poses the most significant threat to their businesses over the next two years.
The sportswear giant, owned by Frasers Group, has brought in biometric cameras in 27 stores to scan shoppers’ faces and check them against a database of suspected criminals.
The technology alerts staff if their real-time image of customers matches with faces on the database, who then decide how to proceed — either closely monitoring the person or escorting them from the store. All customer’s faces are scanned upon entry and later erased from the system unless the staff comes across someone they can “reasonably suspect” is engaging in criminal activities.
In such a case, images are uploaded on the watchlist, retained for a year, and can be shared with other shops that use the Facewatch technology. The surveillance system may be helping to combat retail crime, but it does raise ethical concerns surrounding civil liberties.
Sports Direct seems to have some of the common safeguards such as staff training, quick erasure of images, and staff intervention to review any decision about an individual. There are also risks of bias and inaccuracy, with frequent complaints about the technology being trained on datasets that target people of color.
E-commerce experts also believe the technology is troubling from a moral perspective, as retail employees will have access to the system and they “aren’t police officers and don’t have the same training.” However, they do believe the technology will be effective in identifying suspects and allow for close monitoring of their behavior or indeed exclusion from the store.
Importantly, a balance needs to be struck as people that appear on those cameras have a right to privacy that is already enshrined in UK law.
Zara Inditex owner has also announced that it will introduce a new in-store security system that uses chips sewn into clothes this year. The initiative is part of Inditex’s efforts to phase out hard anti-theft tags, as they become less popular among retailers. The new tags will cut checkout times by up to 50 percent, improve the customer experience and help to prevent theft. The new system will be progressively implemented in all the concepts.
Electronic article tags are gaining popularity in the wider retail industry, with Associated Security revealing that they have resulted in an overall 60-80 percent theft reduction.
