LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 170 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio

Episode Date: December 22, 2023

Happy Holidays from the CrimeScience Podcast Team! LPRC Events are growing to new levels, this week our hosts discuss the continued growth of the LPRC! On this episode, our hosts discuss LPRC Kickoff in NYC, online vs physical shopping, and the evolution of the shopping technology. The hosts also go into a recap of the latest AP/LP news and the NRF Big Show. Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more!

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Crime Science. In this podcast, we explore the science of crime and the practical application of this science for loss prevention and asset protection practitioners as well as other professionals. Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Crime Science. The podcast today is our latest episode in the weekly update series, and I'm joined by our travelers. If it's convenient for them this week, they're both out there, Tom Meehan and Tony D'Onofrio, our producer Diego Rodriguez. A whole lot to discuss in just a short amount of time. And again, emphasizing the two of our events that are coming up, the LPRC kickoff. We are now closing in on 200 registrants. Last I heard was 176,

and that was a day ago. So we're anticipating 200 registrants for LPRC kickoff 2024 edition. Again, that will be Wednesday, January 17th, and that'll be at Hudson Yards. You have to be registered to get in membership. Only it is registration limited. And so we encourage all of our members to send at least one participant. There'll be a lot of planning exercises. We've got some special guests and speakers. And so this is going to be an even more amazing event than in the past, where we averaged 100 executives in the Bloomingdale's training room. So we're excited. We're very grateful to AT&T Business for their sponsorship. We've got several more sponsors that are stepping up that will make apparent on our next broadcast here. sponsors that are stepping up that we'll make apparent on our next broadcast here. And we are very grateful for their sponsorship, their participation, not just in this event,

though. And what they're doing is providing technology and wise counsel, expertise, advice on how we get ahead of some of these crime problems across the double bow tie. You know, as we've talked about, we need to earlier and more effectively impact offender decisions. We call it a fact again. We've much earlier detection and much clearer definition of individuals and crews that are striking us and where they're likely to strike to give us a heads up to be more effective as well as have more precision and outcome impact. And then, of course, on the connect piece, these organizations are helping us do all the above with leading retailers.

We're excited about we've had some calls this week already with some major retailers that are coming into the LPRC in January and February for visits to do whiteboarding with us. We'll talk about those at a future point in time. Some good coordination with the FBI, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Alachua Sheriff's Office, Gainesville Police Department, University of Florida Police Department, and others, again, had a good planning call this week. We'll have another one on the February 29th now, February 29th integrate event. That's our active assailant where we'll have those four components. those four components. One will be an actual module around threat detection, assessment,

and building a threat management plan. We're going to rely now on three different threat assessment and management teams, more to be announced. That will be in part recorded. That will be in part recorded. And so it's going to lead to exercises on the 29th on that left of bank, left of the event, far left as we can get and go through that. We expect mistakes to be made, new learnings and all the above. Very excited for how that's coming together. how that's coming together. The next module part is as the offender, whether they're noticed or not, or they are detected and defined, identified and validated or not, we'll be moving through Gainesville through place and time in a vehicle. We're going to see if deployed LPRs by two different manufacturers, if they pick up and if they provide information to Gainesville PD, UFPD, and Alachua Sheriff's Office, for example, and to the simulated retailer. The next module, of course, will be the highly kinetic active shooter event itself that will take place at our event itself that will take place at our place in U.S. Innovation Square in the building hallways and in our engagement lab, which again is a simulated store environment.

You'll see a first responder by the closest law enforcement officer and then more follow-on as they go through the protocols they've been trained on in this simulation, which will be pre-recorded as will be the first two modules. And then you'll see some delays. You'll see Alachua Sheriff's Office and Gainesville PD SWAT teams becoming involved at some point, whether it's to help neutralize the threat or make the scene cold, as they call it, making sure that nobody else that's a threat is there, no likely threat, and then to help detect and preserve very critical forensic evidence, as well as standing up the University of Florida's now world-class Emergency Operations Center, EOC. That'll be that third module. The

fourth part of this, of course, again, is the exercises that all those that are participating in 2024 integrate. Tabletop exercise will be going through exercises, small learning exercises, for those three modules, left, at, and right of main, because the other part of this is as soon as the threat is neutralized, we all know that there are so many things that go into action. So we're excited. We're sending out special invitations now to our retailers, to our LPRC Innovate advisory panel partners to participate in this. We've been aligning some of the technologies that will play a role in affect, detect, and connect as well. So you can imagine the intricacy of the planning here, again, with local, state, federal law enforcement and fire rescue and emergency operations, as well as, again, wise counsel from multiple retailers that have tragically had to handle and been through these activist-standard, particularly shooter events, to make sure that

we are keeping it real and that we are identifying gaps and understandings, possible learning points. And again, this is the first, and this is sort of a kickoff, if you will, for what may be 12, maybe even 24-month series that LPRC will be doing on active assailant preparation, handling, and recovery. So, stay tuned for all of that. I want to talk just a quick minute about how we're leveraging the journey to crime through the five zones of influence. Zone five, again, being beyond the parking lot, the cyber cultural environment, as well as the physical environment that offenders reside and move through in space and time, their activity and behavioral space, and the awareness space within that that they've got. The zone four, that's our parking area. That's the perimeter of the property

of interest. And then there's a noticing that, a transition in and out of that through that parking area, and then to the perimeter of the interior space, the store in our case, most likely, even though it could be a distribution or office facility. But then we're talking about that transition inside and out zone three, which is the interior space. Zone two is approximate around whatever the target is of the criminal offender, the theft, fraud or violence target. That target is zone one for us, whether that's merchandise, money, an individual, or some other asset or item. So leveraging that five zones, the journey of an offender through space and time, overlaying the double bow tie that was suggested by Professor Boyan, University College London,

that we use that bow tie to put our model on our framework into that we've got the single bow tie, a single event. But what I was going to talk about is we've, we developed in, in before our February, this past February in a great event, the double bow time to show victim one that we just didn't detect effect enough and didn't prevent. But during that crime event, we're doing our best to mitigate. We're doing our best during that at bang or that during that crime event, we're doing our best to mitigate. We're doing our best during that at-bang or during that targeting event, that kinetic part, but then right-of-bang, if the offender is not caught or killed, moves on to convert items to cash, stolen goods, and other actions and behaviors. But again, if they are a serial offender, they're moving on in minutes or

months to victim two and beyond. So what we've learned about the offense and what we've learned about the they look at not just strategy and tactics, but the operations planning, the operational arch between and binding those two, and part of protection in our case, as we leverage that. And stay tuned, by the way, on this concept for a strategy ad session that we'll be doing for senior LPAP leaders. But the idea of the counterpunch strategy, and that means that let's take a boxer. And I've heard this analogy used by army officers that are leveraging this tactic. And that is in this operational program is that if once an individual punches at you, they're now vulnerable and a quick counterpunch at that vulnerability spot or spots can be highly effective. May not stop the individual initially,

but if the punches are landed at the right place and time and with enough kinetic energy, you might get that person to either desist right then or pull back or be less, or pull back or be less, let's just say, energetic and enthusiastic and attacking again because of the severe pain and damage they're incurring. And it's occurring while they are attacking that they make themselves vulnerable during the actual punch. That's kind of part of the concept of the double bow tie, that the tragedy of a first crime event, that victimization and the harm that comes from it. But during that offender, that crew victimizing those people, that place, they are now exposed. They're exposing their biometrics, their vehicle, their digital signatures, all kinds of things about them and how they operate.

And it's even right of bang as they're trying to convert stolen goods to cash and do other things. They're now exposed because they're now kinetic doing things to harm and to try and gain from the victimization they created. Those are opportunity points for us as part of in our double bow tie protecting victim two. So think about counterpunch. Think about the vulnerabilities of an offender or crew as they have to extend their arm, as they attack, as they defraud, as they steal from people in places, that those are opportunities for us to learn about them and strike quickly back to neutralize that threat and try and put those

offenders into timeout, particularly as we connect multiple crimes an offender or crew might have committed, bind those together for law enforcement investigators, and of course for prosecutors and juries and judges. So stay tuned more on that, but I want to go ahead and turn it over to Tony. Thank you, Reid, for all those great updates. This week for the holiday season, I actually want to focus on a brand new article that I just published called the innovation scrimmage for the next retail generation. And the question that I asked is, are we becoming more physical stores or online digital shopper consumers and the reason for this is prior to the pandemic a topic that was popular in general media was the retail apocalypse and this

almagaddon industry ending realization was being driven by all the retail bankruptcies and store closures the opposite force was of course the rise of digital e-commerce. Back in the year 2000, less than 1% of U.S. retail sales came from e-commerce. Fast forward to 2018, and it has reached nearly 10%. And by 2027, it is projected to reach 20.4% of total retail sales. The digital revolution, in my view, in the retail industry is here to stay. For the first half of 2023, according to Morning Consult, these are the reasons for online shopping versus in-store. People like to go in stores for convenience, for product comparisons, and for enjoyment would it be the highest percentage. And also to look at product details. They like to shop online also for convenience, time saved, product selection, product comparisons, enjoyment,

and money saved. So the key is for retailers to figure out the difference between the two models and really optimize them. And as I pointed out in previous articles, really where we're headed is a blending of the physical and the digital into what we call now digital. And that's really the future of retail. It's longer one versus the other, but a growing intentional strategy to combine the business model to drive higher consumer engagement across the different selling channels. higher consumer engagement across the different selling channels. Just as interesting, if not more important, are technology adoption trends for younger consumers and the innovation they would like to see introduced into the shopping journey.

And really what I focused on was new research from Tata Consulting Services, which pointed out that consumers of all ages want new technologies based on their preference to enhance their shopping experience in-store, online, today, and into the future. What was interesting, if you look at the research from Tata Consultancy, is combining physical and digital strategies can help build trust in the retail model as consumers experience less friction if they are able to shop across a harmonized channel. retailers understand that value delivery is the counter force. The greater the value delivered, the more consumer will be willing to give up some of their privacy. And this was confirmed by the Tata Consulting Research, which said that, for example, 70% of millennials would be willing

to give up more personal information to get a discount or perk. Interesting that the younger generation, the Gen Z, that was a 65%, and for the Gen X, it's at 61%, and for the baby boomers, it drops down to 41%. According to the research, key to remember as you reflect and you think about the data that I just stated, millennials are the largest group of consumers, but Gen X spend the most money annually and baby boomers have the largest buying power. Gen Z spending power is on the rise, Gen Z spending power is on the rise and as Millennials age and their incomes grow their spending power only in continued to increase the key again is that value formula delivery in terms of how much privacy am I gonna give up in terms of getting that benefit and actually McKinsey and you can go look at

the formula in the article they actually came up with a personalization value equation. And for McKinsey, it was value is equal to relevance plus timeliness of the delivery of the personalization divided by loss of privacy times trust. So it's really those factors that interject with each other. So you need to deliver relevance, timeliness, and you need to build trust, and that will offset some of that loss of privacy. What was really interesting to me and why I wrote this article was how the new, the younger generation and the type of technology that they're looking for, which to me is much more disruptive going forward. So for example,

60% of millennials want to see virtual fitting rooms of virtual staging capabilities. 56% of Gen Z want to see the same 54% of Millennials want to see live stream shopping experiences 57% of Gen Z want to see that and these this type of shopping is a very very popular in places like China, for example. 48% of consumers or millennials want to basically pay with cryptocurrency. 46% of Gen Z want to do the same. 72% of millennials want contactless checkout. 73% of Gen Z also want contactless checkout. QR codes, very popular with both millennials and Gen Z. 63% of millennials want more QR codes. 63% of Gen Z want more QR codes. Buying on social media, 53% of millennials, 56% of Gen Z. So again, very disruptive capabilities that these consumers, really the younger consumers, are pushing the envelope and they want to see more innovation inside the store. And really, as the research from Tata Consulting Services summarized, retailers must continually seek new ways to retain the loyalty of existing customers while attracting new ones. At the same time, they also need to anticipate the expectations of the customer of the future. tools and technology to identify micro-opportunities, capture new market share, and deepen customer

loyalty. The time is right for retailers to capitalize on the consumer appetite for new and better customer experiences, and investing in the right technology delivered to the right customers using a cost-effective integrated digital strategy will be essential to compete in 2023 and beyond. So again, the future of retail will include both physical stores and online, both with increasingly digitally influenced experiences. Brick and mortar stores will continue to be a critical element as the formula, as the data that I explained at the beginning of the next generation shopper is going to accelerate. Younger generations will demand more innovation in their shopping experiences. or digital channel as they engage your brand and then build a differentiated technology bridges

to the areas that deliver the highest value and the return on investment for the selective strategy. So I find that again, extremely interesting how these young consumers are adapting to technology. And I think that actually tends to set some industry trends for the future happy holidays everyone looking forward to more great podcasts into the new year I want to thank all of you out there thank Diego Rodriguez our producer and I encourage you all stay in touch operations at LP research org LP research org is our of course, and stay tuned for some major updates, some exciting changes to the LPRC and our website and other parts of the organization

as we enter 2024. I want to wish everybody happy holidays, Merry Christmas, season's greetings as we head in again to 2024. Stay safe, or other advice. Views expressed by guests of the Crime Science Podcast are those of the authors and do not reflect the opinions or positions of the Loss Prevention Research Council.