LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 92 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio

Episode Date: February 24, 2022

LPRC IGNITE was a great success with great attendance! Ukraine and Russia Crisis Examined! In this week’s episode, our co-hosts discuss research into Cardio effects from Covid, Forbes lists best Large and Mid-sized Retailers to work for, Tech Investments in 2022, and Civil Unrest in Canada Causes Supply Chain Disruption. Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more! The post CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 92 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio appeared first on Loss Prevention Research Council.

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. We would like to thank Bosch for making this episode possible. Take advantage of the advanced video capabilities offered by Bosch to help reduce your shrink risk. Integrate video recordings with point-of-s sale data for visual verification of transactions and exception reporting. Use video analytics for immediate notification of important AP related events and leverage analytics metadata for fast forensic searches for evidence and to

improve merchandising and operations. Learn more about extending your video system beyond simple surveillance in zones one through four of LPRC's zones of influence by visiting Bosch online at boschsecurity.com. Welcome everybody to another episode of Crime Science the Podcast. This is Reid Hayes. We are broadcasting from Gainesville, Florida, and we want to go ahead, and this is the latest in our weekly crime science update series. I'm joined by colleagues weekly crime science update series. I'm joined by colleagues Tony D'Onofrio and Tom Meehan, as well as our producer Diego Rodriguez. And I wanted to quickly fill you in on a little bit of what we're looking at here as far as the global pandemic. Hopefully this is waning, but we thought we'd touch on a couple of issues with you today, as well as update you on some LPRC

news. But what we're looking at right now is that some of the, there's been a new research project out from the Veterans Administration talking about COVID-19, those that were infected one year out and those that were not infected. And they were able to do some pretty interesting research, taking a look in this case at 20 cardiovascular disease problems that we can have as humans and comparing those that were infected and those that were not on 20, again, 20 different cardiovascular disease states. And so looking at it, it looks like those that were infected presented with one or more of the 20 cardiovascular disease states or pathologies compared to those that were not infected by COVID-19, even those that were very, very mildly infected, it looks like, or at least affected mild symptoms, if you will. But that comes out to about four more per 1,000 that presented with some sort of cardiovascular disease.

But it's always good insight, good input for us to understand that when we get viruses, when we get bacterial infections or any pathology, it can have a near-term effect and may have medium and even long-term effects. Stay tuned on that. But the idea is none of these diseases are benign for us and can create issues. And this is an interesting study. So stay tuned. We'll look for more and more of these types of studies, particularly over the months and years ahead, to see what the fallout might be. On the vaccine front, we're at that point now where over 4.5 billion humans on Earth,

over 4.5 billion humans on Earth, 4.5 billion humans have been vaccinated. That's about 56% of the entire human population of the Earth has now been vaccinated. And many more than that have been at least, this is fully vaccinated, received at least one dose of a multi-dose vaccine. So actually it's in the 60 plus percent range now globally. But when you're talking about closing in on 5 billion people that have been vaccinated and while there have been some negative effects, it's been pretty minimal. The United States looks like right now just over 215 million Americans have now been fully vaccinated. That's over 65 percent and growing. And at least 71 percent of Americans, you know, closing on the quarter of a billion Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccine. So between natural infection through the different

strains or different mutations that have been out there of this virus. And of course, the vaccines, particularly at this level, when literally tens of or almost 200 plus million people over 215 have been vaccinated, there's a lot of immunity. But we're still seeing people that have had multi-vaccines or vaccine doses and have even been infected with one or more strains can still be infected. In fact, I was looking at a study today where those with Omicron are still getting reinfected from Omicron, whether they were vaccinated or not. So we see that the vaccines were developed primarily to reduce the likelihood of serious disease, and they seem to be doing amazing. There you still see anywhere from 60 to 90 plus percent of those that are vaccinated do not have any or have very, very mild symptoms compared to those that are not vaccinated.

So even in these randomized controlled trials, we're seeing that. And so we're looking, again, we've talked about this before, the way out of this eventually, like any of these highly transmissible viruses and other types of infections are going to be vaccination. And we see vaccinations being developed for all types of cancer and other things that our immune system is the best way to fight any disease. And again, vaccines are designed to activate our innate and our adaptive immune system so that they've already recognized whatever the pathology is and go forward with that. And again, it looks like the one thing that made the coronavirus distinct and unique from other viruses

are these spike proteins. So in this case, the vaccines were all developed to get our body to create that spike protein or introduce that spike protein so that our immune system would now recognize, respond, and be ready should we come across and be naturally infected on board some of the viral particles. So it seems to be doing the job on that front, but we need some vaccines that will prevent us from getting any disease from it or very little disease beyond what we're getting right now and or reduce the transmissibility once we are infected that we're not infecting other people so readily. And so we look today, and it's really an interesting lineup here, but in phase one trials, we've got 49 vaccine candidates. Those

are where you're looking at dosing and at safety, as well as a little bit of efficacy around the vaccine. 49 more vaccine candidates in phase two trials. These are randomized controlled trials. They are often double-blinded so that the person giving the vaccine to the individual participant as well as the test participant don't know if they're getting the placebo or getting the real vaccine to maintain a lot of credibility. But again, another 49 vaccine candidates in phase three large-scale randomized controlled double-blind trials. And again, these randomized controlled trials are what we use at the LPRC very often when we can to evaluate different crime protective actions, people, programs, or systems that we're working on to see do they have an effect or not. And by randomly selecting the sample, by randomly assigning those in the

sample to either and having an equal chance to either be assigned to test to get the real treatment, in this case the vaccine or in our case a crime prevention measure, or to control or placebo, they're not being treated. We're comparing what was going on before and then after that the test subjects had got the intervention. How did they respond? Those that didn't get it, did we see changes there? And so that kind of logic helps us make what we call causal inferences. Okay, I think this treatment, this security technology or procedure, it systematically worked because we did not see it over here, and everybody in the sample had

equal likelihood of being placed in either of those conditions or those arms of the test. So powerful, a lot of research around it. Moving on, we're going to go to Ignite and talk about that. Moving on, we're going to go to Ignite and talk about that. LPRC this year, we were able to hold. We talked about that with the LPRC kickoff. We had about 50 people come in to the Access Experience Center there in Manhattan, a just amazing view and facility, and really do brainstorming and learning and getting ready for 2022. Now with Ignite, LPRC Ignite 2022 version, we also had about 50 people come in. We were amazed into Gainesville. We had another couple dozen online. We had strategy at session. That was where we have our most senior leaders on. We had two of our faculty, Jamie and Alex, come over from the University of Florida's Warrington College of Business from the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Institute, gave out some incredible information, did some cool exercises, look for one or both of them to participate in a future

event that we do like Impact. We got a lot of planning done in the LPRC Innovate Advisory Panel. Those are those organizations. Those are those retailers that are coming together with the technology providers that are helping us fund our growth, new research scientists, new data scientists, new environmental venues to work in or experimental areas to get together and help us plan our innovation that we're going to do throughout 2022. And then we got together with our board of advisors. And we had a quorum there online and in person, a huge turnout, so that we could really effectively plan our research, our events, our gatherings, and how

we're going to roll here in 2022. And I want to appreciate and thank each and every one of you that helped us plan, execute, and participate in LPRC Ignite 2022 version. A lot got done. We're excited. Our team has grown with Dr. Sarah McFann and with Orion San Angelo. So those guys are both working. They're both working away on violent crime and building the working group to be bigger and stronger and faster. The retail fraud working group, the innovation working group and the supply chain protection working group working with Diego. So we're we're fired up. We're excited. We're moving forward. We've got more and more technology companies in here every day, putting new technologies in the lab and outside in the overall UF Safer Places lab environment. So stay tuned.

Please let us know what you need and what you'd like to do. Always check us out at lpresearch.org. So if I might, let me turn it over to colleague here and friend, Tony D'Onofrio. Tony, take it away. Thank you for those great updates. Let me start this week with some interesting news in terms of who are the best large and midsize retail employers to work for in 2022. This information is by Forbes as in collaboration with Statista. So here they are. And congratulations to all these companies.

The top five best large American retailers to work for in 2022 were Costco, Trader Joe's, HEB, Quick Trip and Wegmans. The top five best mid-sized American retailers to work for in 22 are Vera Bradley, Lush Fresh Handmade Cosmetics, Build-A-Bear, L.L. Bean and Micro Center. Again, congratulations to all these companies. It's always good to work for some of the best recognized employers in retail. Let me switch topics now and talk about how brick and mortars are changing and the reaffirmation from ChainStoreAge that physical retail made a strong comeback in 2021. Total retail spending around the world grew 9.7% to over $26 trillion, according to eMarketer Insider Intelligence report. The increased hard-paced eMarketer's earlier forecast of 6% growth penned up demand for in-store shoppers helped drive the increase in store sales rebounded by 8.2 percent to over 21 trillion more than was spent in 2019 as the report said by region total retail sales in north america the middle east and africa

rose 15 percent year on year the next biggest increase was in latin america where year-on-year increases were 12%. According to eMarketer, brick and mortar will grow between 2.6 and 3.4 for the remainder of its forecast out to 2025. The channel will see more new spending this year than e-commerce and the comparison was $702 billion versus $603 billion despite its lower growth rate. Let me switch now to the final topic this week and provide some interesting new data from the IHL group on both the retail industry in a recent retail webinar on the state of the industry and technology and what happens next. Total retail sales in the U.S. increased a very robust 18% in 2021.

The strongest quote was especially soft goods, which included apparel, which grew 48%. apparel which grew 48 percent, convenience and gas grew nearly 37 percent, and restaurant sales grew over 32 percent. Even what was once challenged department stores grew their sales over 22 percent in 2021. The top retail challenges at the start of 2022 are inflation in wages and product costs, continued port issues leading to product shortages and packaging shortages. I have just come back to shopping at a retail store. I can tell you there's still a lot of empty shelves. shortages which are expected to increase investments in automation, chip shortages in all areas, and continued COVID responses or protocols. Going forward, consumers expect to continue to shop omnichannel. North America leads the world in stores being more important than digital in the essential category, which is grocery, drug, convenience, etc. 64% prefer to shop in-store in 2022, and 36% will prefer to

shop in digital channels. For apparel in North America, 55% plan to shop in-store and a surprising 45% digitally. The highest shift for digital channels is stationed in place in Asia Pacific and Latin and South America. The top five pain points for essential work stores in-store shopping in 2022 are product availability, lines in stores, COVID safety in stores, wrong prices, and lack of staff. For click and collect, so online, the top five pain points are wait times, slots, substitution costs, fewer promotions and discounts, lines and delays in pickup,

and can add to existing orders. So these are click and collect that you order online and then pick up in stores. The top five pain points in apparel are size availability, lines in store, not enough dressing rooms, lack of staff, and wrong prices. For apparel, the top five pain points are unknown fit, limited return options, images, don't match reality,

delivery too long, and inventory, visibility, and accuracy. And that's for these last pain points for apparel delivery. What distinguishes retail winners, which are defined as retailers that grew 10% in their sales in the previous year, are their investments in technologies. For retail winners, nearly 43% of their sales are coming from digital journeys, which is 26% higher than the below average retailers. Retail winners are 100% to 120% more likely to have optimized their local delivery, 67% more optimized their ship from warehouse, and 39% more optimized

in buy online, pick up in stores, and click and collect services. Optimizing these services means these retailers are driving higher margins. Retail winners have a 95% higher IT spend than average retailers, 376% more IT spend, 110% more BOPIS or buy online, pick up in line spend, and 58% more local delivery IT spend. Retail winners believe in our investing in mobile devices at 107% for managers and 72% for store associates and 53% are investing in mobile POS.

Winners trust consumers self-checkout. Retail winners are 81% more likely to have mobile SecShark, or DIA, an app enabled for customers. IT spend had a once in a generation increase. Since 2019, IT spend budgets, or IT budgets increased 40%, and there's a 48% increase in new innovation spend since in 2019.

That's new innovation. For 2022, North American retailers are expected to spend $25 billion on software as a service cloud solution. So all great data as you engage with the loss prevention council so you can optimize the delivery of all these new solutions as we march on into 2022. And that's the updates for this week. Let me turn it over to our next speaker. Thank you. Thank you, Reid. Thank you, Tony.

I'm going to be rather brief today about them in the D.C. market. And I'll start off with just some of the civil unrest that we talked about in the past few weeks in Canada related to the vaccination or anti-vaccination cause. was primarily truck drivers that were blocking thoroughfares and extremely large pass-throughs. The largest, really, connection to the United States and Canada was blocked. And I'm actually in D.C. with some folks from Canada and said that, while it may not seem like it through the news reports, but this was extremely disruptive through the major metropolitan areas and was something that hadn't been seen ever. So we'll continue to monitor that. We are seeing some of that same activity coming to the U.S. and I don't want to use the word

copycat, but it is copycat. I'm actually again in D.C. and there was some news yesterday and today of potential truck drivers blocking the beltway related to anti-vaccination. So definitely, definitely something we'll continue to monitor at the fusion net. Switching gears very quickly, we've been talking about over the last couple of weeks, but the Ukraine-Russian crisis, it continues to be something that we're monitoring closely to see if it will have impact in the United States. The United States intelligence agencies are still suggesting that there is an invasion imminent. For the retail community, one of the challenges with an already very difficult supply chain environment is potentially could further exasperate that

because of the fact that some supply chain challenges that occur do really resonate from the central and western European areas. So really, when you're thinking there's a lot of high technology products, really, when you're thinking of supply chain issues, we don't often think of Europe, but there is a lot of things that come from China to Europe and are manufactured in Europe and then make their way to the United States. So we'll continue to monitor that to ensure that we have the most up-to-date information available for the group. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Ignite.

Both Tony and I had an opportunity to go to Ignite. It was a fantastic event, some really great coverage. Very, very excited for what's coming in 2022 for LPRC Impact, sorry, LPRC, the Impact Conference, the Ignite Conference, a lot of exciting things to do. LPRC Impact 2022 will be live and in person, so definitely looking forward to that. And with that, as I said, I'll keep it short today. I'm going to turn it back over to Reid. All right. Thank you so much, Tony and Tom, for all your great insights. Amazing stuff. I want to thank both of you. I want to thank Diego Rodriguez, our producer.

And most of all, I want to thank you all, our listeners out there. We do want to know, tune us in, spread the word on Crime Science, the podcast, send it out, send links. We're on all the platforms, as you know. Let's continue to build the audience, the interaction. We need your questions, your comments, your suggestions. Look us up at operations at lpresearch.org. So everybody stay safe and stay in touch. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast, presented by the Loss Prevention Research Council and sponsored by Bosch Security. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can find more crime science episodes and valuable information at lpresearch.org.

The content provided in the Crime Science Podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for legal, financial, 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.