LPRC - Episode 12 – Product Protection & LPRC Theories/Methods

Episode Date: August 31, 2018

The post Episode 12 – Product Protection & LPRC Theories/Methods appeared first on Loss Prevention Research Council.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to Crime Science. In this podcast, we aim to explore the science of crime and the practical application of the science for loss prevention and asset protection practitioners, as well as other professionals. Co-host Dr. Reid Hayes of the Loss Prevention Research Council and Tom Meehan of ControlTech discuss a wide range of topics with industry experts, thought leaders, solution providers, and many more. This week's episode will focus on product protection and LPRC theories and methods with featured guest LPRC Senior Research Scientist Mike Giblin. We would like to thank Bosch for making this episode possible. Protect high-risk items using Bosch IP cameras with built-in video analytics. Send a video snapshot to a manager when a person loiters at a display or trigger an audio message to play through a loudspeaker when an item is touched while getting situational awareness using video verification solutions.

Alert potential offenders that are being watched and improve customer service for legitimate shoppers, all with video analytics. Learn more about product protection in Zones 1 and 2 of the LPRC Zones of Influence or by visiting Bosch online at boschsecurity.com. All right, live from Gainesville, Florida, here we are with another episode of Crime Science from the Loss Prevention Research Council, LPRC.

And today, myself, Dr. Reed Hayes from the University of Florida. I'm joined by our senior research scientist at the LPRC, Mike Giblin, as well, of course, my co-host, Tom Meehan of Control Tech. And today what we're going to do is talk a little bit with Mike about research, but research particularly on the product protection side. How do we protect merchandise but not run off the good customer while doing that? And so we want to always be loss prevention, not as some in retail used to call us sales prevention. So Tom, with that, I'm going to go over to you for a quick introduction and

see what your first question might be for Mike. Sure. Thank you, Reed. This is a great topic for all of the listeners. It's certainly near and dear to my heart. But without further ado, I'd like to introduce Mike Gillen. Mike, why don't you tell the listeners about yourself, a little bio and background. I know most of the folks know you that are related to the LPRC, but a lot of our listeners are not. Sure. Thanks, Tom. So I have been with LPRC for a little bit over four years. I have been facilitating the product protection group throughout that time.

I come from a background of consumer behavior, so that has definitely given me kind of some good insight when it comes to ensuring that customers are being thought about throughout the research process. Anytime that we do research, we have customers as part of the process that we interview. We want to make sure any LP technologies that we're testing out, we get feedback from customers, make sure that it has either a neutral or a positive effect on customers. We don't want to inhibit sales while we're trying to reduce shrink. So that is one of the main groups I facilitate. It's one of the largest groups at the LPRC. We average maybe about 25 folks on our monthly call series for this group.

And we actually have 18 projects going on here in 2018 in this working group. So a lot of the research that we do revolves around testing technologies, doing offender, customer, and associate interviews. Most of that research is going to fall into this product protection working group. Things like EAS, things like wraps, keepers, those types of technologies, as well as fixture technologies and benefit denial are all going to fall into this category. And, Mike, in that group with product protection, I know that, and Reid mentioned it during the introduction, protection. I know that, and Reid mentioned it during the introduction, in the past, the term, you know, sales prevention was used and asset protection was a cost center. You know, how do you tackle deterring crime without taking away from the shopping experience?

So I think that's a great question. There's a special subset of technologies out there that kind of provide a dual benefit. So not only will they hopefully prevent crime and prevent shoplifting, but they have some other sort of benefit that goes along with it. So whether it's allowing the retailers who have increased inventory control or insight into their inventory or if it's something that actually makes shopping easier. So if it's spreading the product out or presenting it in a way that becomes easier to shop at the rack, those technologies are kind of a special class. And so that's the first area that we look at. We look at trying to take technologies that have been presented to retailers and come up with ways to maybe do some tweaks and turn them into those dual function technologies that not only prevent theft but can somehow help the customer in one way or another. And one of the major ways that these technologies do help customers that often gets

overlooked is by allowing the product to be on open sale. So if you're taking something and putting it out and you're wrapping it or you're putting an EAS tag on it, that may be a minor inconvenience for customers, but they may not realize that the alternative is having the product locked behind a glass case where they would have to ask for assistance. And so kind of raising awareness on that dynamic is another important piece of what we do. And specific to the working group, because it's such a large working group, and I think it's one of the more, you know, fluent in the sense that it applies to almost everybody that's a part of the LPRC. What are some of the research projects that you've done recently? If you could just give a brief overview of one that comes to mind.

I think when you talk about the selling experience and how it affects the customer, it might help to add some context with a research project and what was learned from it. Yeah, absolutely. So one great example is a benefit denial technology that we've been doing research on for the past couple of years. So this technology is in the electronic product category. It is essentially built into the firmware of an electronic product, and it renders the product useless until it's purchased, until it's actually run through the point of sale. until it's actually run through the point of sale. There's an activation code required that doesn't get generated until that sale occurs. So someone could steal it off of the shelves. They could bring it home and try every permutation that they'd like of the code.

And there's, in fact, no code that will unlock it if it hasn't been purchased. So we've been doing research on this. We've been looking at it from several different angles. Customers is a huge piece of it. So we've done some customer interviews in a couple of different stores. Our research tends to go from a small, maybe pilot one store test up to a 10 to 20 store test, so on and so forth, all the way to a full scale nationwide rollout. That's exactly the process that we followed here. So we interviewed a handful of customers in a single store at the pilot store. Then we then interviewed about 20 customers at the next stage, and then we

moved down the line from there. We wanted to get a sense of how intuitive this concept was to the customers. We wanted to make sure that it was something that was easily understood. There's a box mark that goes on these products that lets customers and would-be offenders know that this technology is present. So a big part of the battle is making sure that that box mark is designed in a way that's very easy to understand, gets the message across clearly, and prepares the customer for the additional step they'll need to take in this process of purchasing that they wouldn't normally, which is unlocking the product once it's been purchased. So we conducted customer interviews. We also conducted offender interviews. We wanted to make sure that, again, that message was loud

and clear to offenders, that they understood what this technology was, understood that it was present, they noticed it, and then also that they were deterred by it. They didn't just think, I can bring it home, I'll figure it out afterwards, or I've got a tech-savvy buddy that's going to be able to unlock this thing. We wanted to make sure there was a deterrent factor as well. Then the third group that we interview with all of our research is associates. So we got some really interesting feedback in this case. Associates felt that with this technology in place, they felt more at ease. So they were able to spend less time worrying about this particular end cap that, in this case, tablets were on.

They were able to focus on other parts of their job. They didn't feel like they had to stop stalking and look up every 10 seconds and make sure that they were policing the area. So it allowed them to focus more on other parts of their work. And this is a great example as well of, as I mentioned earlier, being able to take a product that was locked up, which these tablets were beforehand. The retailer just wasn't able to bear the cost of having them out on open sale because of the shrink that they were incurring. And we were able to bring the technology out onto an end cap. And obviously, when you bring it from an NCAP from a locked state, you're going to hypothesize a sales

increase, which is what we saw here in this case. I know the LPRC often does offender interviews, and I think that the members, you know, that's one of the things that people always resonate to. I know I always did in both my past and present. For this particular study, what are some of the things that you learned from the offenders? What did they say? What, if anything, changed? And how did you share that with the LPRC members? Yeah, so that's definitely critical to the research process.

Yeah, so that's definitely critical to the research process. Once we get this information and feedback from all three of those populations, we return that to the solution provider that is designing the technology. And the great hope is that they will take that and incorporate it and actually change their designs. And so we did that with the creation of the box mark that goes on to the product in this case. We took, I think, maybe five or six different iterations of it and showed it to the offenders. We also showed it to would-be customers and to LP executives and got feedback from each group. We got great kind of individualized feedback from offenders, things like, you know, this thing looks like it's an antivirus protection that's on this computer. It's meant to protect the consumer once they

purchase it. This thing, you know, isn't noticeable enough or's an antivirus protection that's on this computer. It's meant to protect the consumer once they purchase it. This thing, you know, isn't noticeable enough or I don't understand what this means. We were able to bring that back to the manufacturer. We got feedback about the color and about what color kind of pops the most and is going to be the most noticeable that we brought back as well. When it comes to the technology itself, the first iteration of this technology was much more onerous on the side of the retailer when it comes to the infrastructure demand of what upfront kind of purchase they would have to make, upfront changes to their point of sale. It actually required a separate scanning device, and it required maybe 30-second or so kind of unlocking process that would occur at the point of sale. And through LPRC's research and through the feedback that they garnered, they were very receptive to that feedback and were able to adapt the technology and make it something more feasible that the retailers would be able to better use

and incorporate into their stores. And so that's definitely, you know, we'd love to see that process unfold each time that we conduct research. The requisites for that are it to be kind of phased research. So we talk about our innovation chains and the process starting maybe in a single store and then moving out to a small, medium, and large-sized test. One of the main kind of pieces that we want to make sure occurs there, we hate to see somebody jump right in with a single-store test and then say,

okay, I got the results I need. We want them to move to phase two to make sure that the initial findings that we're seeing are supported and that whatever iterations or changes our research may suggest end up being implemented and that we're able to kind of do a retest and see, OK, let's look at what phase two looks like. Let's look at what the second iteration of this technology looks like. okay, let's look at what phase two looks like. Let's look at what the second iteration of this technology looks like. You know, Mike, I wanted to ask you, you've been here four years at the LPRC. From your perspective, what are some of the changes that the LPRC has made that are probably having an impact on what we do in loss prevention or asset protection and how we do it, and most

importantly, the results of asset protection action? Absolutely, yes. So the retailers, I think, have changed their decision-making process a little bit over the course of time from what I've seen. So the decision kind of involves this additional stage of research and testing, which I think, you know, the LPRC over the years has helped to kind of get put into that process. So they'll come to either us or they'll, you know, previously, maybe it was just going straight to a solution provider and saying, let's put this in a store and see what it looks like, or in 10 stores or 50 stores. But doing it in a way where we're actually kind of collecting scientific data, where we're making sure that we're getting kind of pointed, you know, interview feedback from the three populations of interest

as well as doing a fair job of assigning control group and test group when it comes to randomized controlled trials. I think that that kind of fundamental shift in the decision process and a demanding of evidence, you know, going to a solution provider and saying, well, this looks great, but where's your evidence? Has this been tested? Is a huge part of the kind of shift that we're seeing in retail that I think LPRC has played a major role in. That's great. And as we've talked about on this podcast, what we try to do is use psychology, that we're trying to convince or at least influence shoppers to do the right thing and to do more of that right thing, buy, as well as, of course, influence the bad guy, the offender, not to come here. Or if they do, not to do something bad or forbid that if they do, then not to come back.

So can you describe sort of some of the psychology that we use and that we use to develop initially what we're doing and then to tweak the treatments or the countermeasures that we use? So I think one of the most important points that we make and that we try to ensure is really ingrained in our membership is this concept of not being the target audience ourselves. So we as scientists or as LP professionals, whatever the case may be, we're going to be approaching the world around us in a very different way from the offenders or from customers, depending on the customer subset. So when we walk into a store, we see really a whole different world than an offender would see. You know, when you think about even the individual differences in things like vision, you know, do people have corrected

vision? Are they able to see something that's 10 feet away, 20 feet away? I think that that's a great kind of analogy for, you know, that's kind of a physical alteration of the space around them. But the psychological alterations, you know, you're not going to notice something if you don't know what it is. You're not going to understand technology, even if you do notice it, if you don't live in this world of loss prevention and, you know, anti-theft technologies all around you every day. So I think that's really one of the most important psychological pieces is trying to start from that kind of square one of what does the offender see when they walk into this environment? And once we understand that a little bit better, we can affect the way that they go about interacting with their environment. So once we have a kind of a sense of

are they noticing this or aren't they, we can dive a little bit deeper, try to figure out why that is, and then we can make whatever tweaks we need to in order to raise the rate of noticing, raise the rate of understanding, and eventually raise the rate of deterrence with those technologies and with those policy changes. Yeah, that's good stuff. And maybe we get a little bit deeper in the weeds. How do you use the concepts that we derive from situational crime prevention from Dr. Ron Clark and others that go back now more than one decade, like effort and risk and reward. How do you operationalize those? How do you use those to design, to enhance, and to adjust as the offender does?

So different technologies out there definitely try to hone in on one of those three. We call them mechanisms of action. And some of them try to do multiple at once. But again, it's all about understanding, you know, what's going on behind the curtain. So somebody like a product manufacturer or somebody like, you know, APM or something like that in a store, you know, they're going to understand that if you lock something in a safe, it's harder to get. But really trying to break down what is it about that that's effective, you know, once you get that secret sauce out of it through the research process, you can

repeat that. You can say, well, let's take that one attribute or that one kind of mechanism that's really causing this thing to be protected, and let's incorporate that into other technologies that are out there. So if it turns out that, you know, a safe, for instance, works well because it is hidden, maybe it's not the fact that it's something that is difficult to get into. It's just that it's in a back room and that people don't know where it is. We've heard of some companies using safes that are kind of meant to be disguised as mini fridges, things like that. So, you know, we're talking

about a concept of hiding your asset as opposed to protecting it behind four inches of metal, that kind of thing. So really taking a deep dive with effort, risk, and reward and understanding why it is that the things that seem to be working are in fact working and then duplicating and replicating those attributes and trying to put them into additional technologies, making things more noticeable if that was what was causing it not to work, making things riskier or more effortful or less rewarding if those are the areas that need improvement.

That's good. And you incorporate a little bit of the see, get, fear into the effort, risk, reward that we're trying to convince this person, hey, don't initiate, don't commence this crime because it's going to be too difficult, as you mentioned, or you know what, you're going to get caught. It's just too risky for you. Or it's not going to be worth it. There's benefit denial here. We're going to deny you the reward or what all you thought you would get out of this. It's just not going to be worth it.

But you mentioned on the see, get, fear. Can you elaborate a little more? You talked about we want to make things maybe more noticeable, but also recognizable and credible, I guess, right? Yeah, so unlike effort, risk, and reward, those are kind of three separate pieces that aren't necessarily nested within one another. You don't need effort in order to get risk, in order to get reward. But Seek It, Fear! does follow that kind of protocol process where it's very difficult to get a deterrent effect if you don't get these two prerequisites of the offender noticing it and the offender understanding

that it's there to prevent theft. And so that's, I think, a really interesting piece that we've tried to get out into our membership base and make sure that that's kind of the way that they're thinking of this concept of noticeability comes first. It's going to be very difficult to get these other two attributes if noticeability is lacking. So you have to start there. Then you have to move to understanding, making sure that the technology is recognized as a loss prevention technology as well as being noticeable. And then finally, to the third criteria of I've noticed it. I understand it's there to stop me. But do I believe whatever deterrent kind of claim that is being made? Do I really think there's someone

behind the camera? Do I really think there's someone behind the camera? Do I really think anyone's going to turn their head and look if this EAS pedestal goes off? That's kind of the third factor. And so the fact that these have to occur kind of in sequence, I think, is a great thought exercise and a great kind of a great structure that LPRC provides for the LP community to help them kind of think through these problems in a way that's going to allow them to get the best results. Now, good again, Mike. And I wanted to see if you could touch a little bit on this zones of influence concept. We're making things harder, riskier, less rewarding. Hopefully, that's the way the offender takes what we're doing

and that they do notice it or perceive it somehow, and they understand how it might bite them. And you know what? It's a clear and present danger to what they're trying to do. They fear it or it's a credible threat. But how do we deploy three-dimensionally? Can you kind of describe with your research and working with the membership, the practitioners out there, how we use the zones concept? So the zones are all about the offender's journey. So,

you know, an offender doesn't just suddenly pop into existence when they walk through the doors of a retail store. Obviously, you know, they had to walk through the parking lot to get there. They had to make their way to the parking lot from wherever their domicile is and through whatever neighborhood that happens to be in. And so all of these are opportunity points. And so I think one of the big pieces of the zones of influence concept is kind of taking a step back and zooming out a little bit and looking at the holistic list of opportunity points that we have in order to deter a particular crime. So if an offender is, you know, getting to your door and is still kind of set on the fact that they're going to try to shoplift from you, you've already missed a couple opportunities.

There was an opportunity in the parking lot to either have more cameras, more present cameras, more present signage, maybe to have an increased impression of control by being a cleanlier setting or by being just a more aesthetically pleasing setting. You've missed opportunities perhaps out in zone five already, which are things like the overall brand image that you have, you know, is the relationship that you have with your customers, one where they feel that you're more likely to forgive them if they get caught committing a crime on your property, because that's your overall kind of vibe that you have, is that you're a friendly customer facing company. You know, these are all things that we consider. Things like zone five also fall into the category of where the product goes once it's stolen.

And so we think of the zones of influence as the journey into the store, so from Zone 5 to 4 to 3 to 2 to 1, all the way to the product, and then back out, so out from 1 to out into 3, 4, and 5. is going to have several opportunity points at each step of that process where you can affect that offender's decision, show them technologies that could potentially deter them, have policies in place, have people talking to them, have associates that are supposed to greet them. These are all the kind of ways that we think about their process of moving in and out of your space and the different opportunity points that are there. One of the major things that we hear from our retail members when we present this to them is, hey, you know, I was doing a good job in this area, maybe zone one, maybe zone two. But now that you're presenting it to me this way, I feel like there's a huge missed opportunity somewhere else. And so it allows them to think more holistically

and kind of shore up those opportunity points that they may have missed. Very good. So what I'll do, as we've talked about a little bit about how the research works and the psychological aspects of how we're trying to influence offenders and their decisions or choices that they make. You know, I'm going to ask one more question, go back over to Tom. But, you know, while I remember this, Mike, can you maybe describe briefly a typical day in the life of an LPRC research scientist. You're supporting practitioners that are out there in the stores or DCs or in the corporate office trying to protect things. You're also supporting the practitioners in the solution partners organizations as they develop and tweak solutions that the retailers need. Can you describe a typical day? Sure. So I think we have kind of

a model that we talk about here that we refer to as the three I's. I see that as a really kind of good structure to center the day around when it comes to being a research scientist here. So identify, inform, and integrate are those three I's. Starting with identify, we try to find problems out there that we can help try to solve for retailers. We try to identify issues that they're facing. We try to help them quantify whatever that issue is, really try to drill down and figure out exactly what question they'd like answered. Turn general, I'm having an issue here type of statements into I hypothesize that if I do this differently, maybe this different outcome will occur type of statements. differently, maybe this different outcome will occur type of statements. Once we do that, we need to conduct the research, which is a huge part of what we do here day to day, and then inform the

members on it, which is probably the second biggest piece, if not kind of tied for first. We need to take the research, put it in a format that's very usable for these practitioners, make sure that it's something that is short enough that they're actually going to be able to get through it quickly and, you know, put it into whatever format they need to move forward with it and use it to change the way that they do something from their day-to-day jobs. And then from there, we help them with integration. So what's the next step? Where does this fit into my grand scheme of everything I'm trying to accomplish this

year as a retailer? How can this be used in other formats? Or how can this help me with my overall strategy, as well as next steps on that particular research question. So now that we have this question answered, what's the kind of natural next question that needs to be asked or do we need to do additional research in a new way to provide additional evidence? So those three I's, I think, are a really good kind of way of thinking about the way that scientists operate here day to day. Good stuff. Tom, I'm going to go back to you. Mike, so if you had an opportunity to talk to a prospective member or a very new member of the LPRSC, what would be some advice or recommendations you would give them to make the researchers' lives easier? you would give them to make the researchers' lives easier? That's a great question.

So I think the number one piece that I would try to convey immediately is this kind of concept of, you know, getting in what you put out when it comes to data analysis, when it comes to research design. So we'll have situations where a retailer will come to us and they'll be really excited. They'll say, okay, we're going to hand you this data set and we want to we want to know, on average, do women shop at this time more often than men? And we'll look at the data set, and we'll see that they didn't give us time-of-day metrics on sales or something like that, or they didn't give us gender metrics. And so I think that just kind of developing that understanding of

this is the type of information that you need to collect, this is the ideal way to collect it in order to answer certain questions, I think is a huge piece that can really help with the overall scientific process. No matter how that data is going to be used, collecting it in that way, even if it's not for immediate use, if it's something that you just may plan in the future, is definitely huge. And when it comes to the way that the research process unfolds for trials, randomized controlled trials, things of that nature, it's equally important making sure that things are set up in a way, you know, if a retailer comes to us and wants to do a randomized controlled trial, and they say, I have approval to do it in these four stores that are all in different corners of the country, that severely limits our ability as scientists to

do things like randomize, to do things like control for extraneous variables and factors. And so those two pieces, I think, are really important. Just that concept of planning very carefully what you're going to collect and how you're going to set up a study so that you can kind of set yourself up for success in those areas. And with specifically to see get fear, if you have a retailer that's thinking of that, are there easy things or easy steps to break that down when they're basically trying to apply something that they learned from a research

study? Well, I think one of the kind of easiest ways to get started with Seagate Fear is to just kind of do a thought exercise with some of the technologies that are shelf in your electronic section, and try to, you know, just visualize as an offender, as a customer walking through those areas, you know, are the things that I've put in place that are meant to eventually be deterrents, are they being noticed? You know, what potentially could I do to make them more noticeable if I feel that there's opportunities there? You know, are they technologies that are obvious when it comes to the mechanisms. So is it a camera that looks like a camera or is it, you know, just kind of a little dot on the ceiling kind of thing? And then I think fear is the one that we have a better handle on. You know, we have a sense intuitively of if something's working or not, if we're getting to that kind of step three.

So I think that the real kind of eye-opening pieces are those first two steps that are prerequisites to that fear. And specifically to the product protection working group, how does a member get involved? When is the call? So if someone's listening to this, how can they get involved and when should they be on the call? Yeah, so we do a monthly call for the product protection group. It is, I believe, the third Thursday of each month at 11 o'clock. I'll have to double check on that. But to get involved, just you can reach out to myself, mike at lpresearch.org. And I'm happy to get you involved in that group. I'm happy to set a call to give you a quick update on what we're up to. I think taking a step maybe a little bit further

back, our research agenda is a really powerful tool that can be used to help someone that's kind of learning about us for the first time really get a sense of what these working groups are, what the innovation chains are, and where all the research that we conduct throughout the year fits into them. So we have, I think, about 60 projects that we have listed on this document. It's on the front page of our website towards the bottom right corner. You can take a listed on this document. It's on the front page of our website towards the bottom right corner. You can take a look at this document. When you click on each tile, it gives you a pop-up that shows what that project is and what group it's occurring in.

So that's a great way to take a look and see, okay, these five projects are really interesting to me. It looks like they're kind of occurring in the product protection group and maybe one other group. I should reach out and see if I can start getting on those two monthly calls. So I think that that's a great kind of first couple of steps for someone that's, you know, intrigued by this and wants to know how to get started. You know, Mike, I want to ask you, you know, we know that our role at the LPRC is to support the practitioner to get better at building their strategy, the framework to deliver the strategy, and, of course, the tactics and technology they use to make that all work for them. And further, we know that we're here to support not only their organizations but the industry associations. We work very well, we believe, with RELA, with NRF, with FMI, with the Retail Council of Canada, the National Associations of Convenience Stores, CLEAR, and on and on.

We're not here to compete but to support. But I was going to ask you, in our role, how are we different than the industry associations? And I think one way is the working groups and that ongoing nature. But also maybe you can work in what an I-chain or an innovation chain is and use what you're working on with RFID there. Sure. So our conference differs a little bit from other conferences in the industry because it is, at its foundation, a culmination of everything that's been done throughout the year. So it's kind of a show and tell of everything that these working groups have accomplished through their 12 monthly calls, through whatever in-person summits they've done throughout the course of the year, through the other ways that they've interacted with one another and gotten work done, conducted research, finished reports. And this is kind of our opportunity during the Impact Conference each year to show those research projects off. during the impact conference each year to show those research projects off. So that's a little bit different, I think, in that it's kind of a showing of what ongoing processes have been occurring.

I think that's, you know, to your other points, the working groups are kind of collections of a area that is of interest. So there's something like a product protection working group where there can be, you know, a dozen different tests going on, one that looks at HBC products in a pharmacy, one that looks at electronic products in a big box retailer. And what they have in common is kind of the general theme of what's trying to be accomplished, which is protecting the product. But they aren't necessarily kind of connected to one another when it comes to the physical space that they occur in, or when it comes to an overall kind of thematic process through which we're going to move on to a next stage.

The innovation chains are a little bit different in that everything in an innovation chain is holistic, in that it usually will occur in the same geographic location as we move from one step in the chain to the next. And each project kind of is a small piece of a larger project. And so it's, I think, is a grander kind of scheme. It's it's meant to move us in a direction of understanding how technologies talk to one another, how things integrate with one another and solving a big question. Something like how do you stop violence in a retail setting? That's something an innovation chain would tackle, whereas product protection working group and other working groups would tackle smaller questions like, does this particular technology seem to protect this particular type of product?

So I think it's kind of a scalability as well as a connectivity kind of difference. All right. Thank you for that. I know that helps me understand how the LPRC works to support our members in their mission. understand how the LPRC works to support our members in their mission. So what I'd like to do today is thank you, Mike, Mike Giblin, again, Senior Research Scientist at the Loss Prevention Research Council. Of course, my partner in crime, Tom Meehan of Control Tech, a longtime retail LPAP practitioner. I want to thank our producer, Kevin Tran, and our technical director, of course, Jordan Burchell, and everybody out there listening to us. Please, we're always looking for and grateful for your suggestions on topics, on process, and everything else. at the 2018 LPRC Impact Conference. Last year, almost 325 executives getting together at and on the University of Florida campus to go through learning labs and go through over 25 research projects.

This year, we anticipate an even larger crowd. We're going up to 10 learning labs this year. We've got a really neat gamification program called Mad Scientist, where the participant is and becomes the mad scientist as they move through and learn and share and have a blast. So I want to let everybody know, Impact is the first to the third of October this year, typically the first week in October here in beautiful Gainesville, Florida.

If you have more questions, you want to learn more, you want to enroll, register for impact, go to lpresearch.org backslash impact. So with that, I'm going to sign off. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Crime Science. Thank you. Thank you everyone for tuning in. We would like to once again thank Bosch for making this episode possible. If you would like to suggest topics for future episodes or provide feedback, please email kevin at lpresearch.org. See you next time.