Supermarkets wise to checkout cheats
Waves of thefts from self-service checkouts overseas are less likely to be as common here, experts believe.
A British criminologist Adrian Beck told Australian media this week that shoppers were very good at ‘‘neutralising’’ their moral concerns, and could be tempted to steal from a self-serve counter where they would never steal from a shelf.
His thoughts concurred with a British study in 2014, which found one in five people who bagged their own groceries stole, and that more than $2 billion went missing from self-scanning machines in the United Kingdom each year.
Retail NZ estimates that the retail sector loses about $1.3 billion a year – mostly through shoplifting – and acknowledges it is an issue.
‘‘Our retailers have told us that selfservice areas are definitely on their radar as areas with high instances of theft, and must be very closely monitored by staff,’’ spokeswoman Annika Chapman said.
Foodstuffs, which owns Pak’n Save, Four Square and New World supermarkets, declined to disclose how much stock it lost but said it did have various strategies to ensure its self-serve counters were not abused.
They included CCTV cameras, a visible staff presence and customer alerts to contact staff for specific types of transactions.
Retail consultant Chris Wilkinson, of First Retail Group, said shoplifting was a big issue in New Zealand, particularly stealing to order.
But he felt self-service theft was more prevalent in the UK, partly because the checkouts were more widely used there and partly because New Zealand retail assistants were more attentive.
‘‘Here in New Zealand there’s a lot more attention paid to the self-service counters and I think part of it is driven by the alcohol regulations,’’ he said.
In Australia, calls to a Perth talkback station ran hot with people who said they deliberately defrauded the self-service checkouts because of grievances with big business.
Marc Wilson, a psychology lecturer at Victoria University, said there were usually a host of reasons behind theft, but people found it easier to justify from big entities than smaller retailers.
‘‘There have been studies which involve deliberately giving people more change than they deserve and what you find is that if it’s from a Countdown, people are happier to wander away but if it’s the corner store they’re more likely to [be honest].’’
Some people made honest mistakes, and others found it easier to distance themselves from a machine.
But Wilson said thieves often overestimated how many other people stole as well.
‘‘You’re thinking, ‘Ooh, I could slip the carrots in under something; I betcha everyone does it.’
‘‘But don’t forget everybody engages in deceptive behaviour at some point; in fact, people who say they have never told a lie are lying.’’