Coles supermarkets recently announced major changes to their self-service checkouts directing people with more than 12 items to a staffed lane.
The changes come in response to findings that up to one third of customers deliberately give themselves a discount when scanning their own goods.
Research from the Australian National University has found that some customers are applying what has been termed the “carrot discount”- where customers scan an expensive item such as cherries as a cheaper item, such as carrots… or Lady finger bananas as Cavendish bananas.
Professor Larry Neale from Queensland University of Technology’s business school told 720 ABC Perth last year that, psychologically, self-service
checkouts made stealing easier because they distanced customers from the business.
“Self-serve checkouts provide that distance between you and the organisation or an identifiable victim,” Professor Neale said.
Resentment of the major supermarket chains was also used as an excuse by shoppers to wrongly enter information or drop items into their bags without scanning them, Professor Neale said.
The issue appears to have become so serious that Coles has brought in the NSW Police force. NSW Police has pledged to charge shoplifters over thefts as small as $2.00. In a statement to the media late last year, NSW Detective
Superintendent Murray Chapman said: “Even if it is the avocado and you think you’re saving $2, it’s still shoplifting”.
NSW Police also announced officers will be running a number of covert operations involving closed circuit camera filming, local police and loss prevention officers in plain clothes.
In NSW, shoplifting is considered a form of stealing and is punishable under the Crimes Act 1900 with a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment.