LPRC’s NextRetail Research Center
Create. Test. Grow.
- The center conducts high-quality, simultaneous environment + process + technology = behavior R&D to improve 1. Customer Purchasing, 2. Company margin, and 3. Onsite Safety/security.
- The center’s goals include:
- Use comprehensive environment-behavior dynamics research to prescribe and test integrated people x process x technology package implementation and execution.
- Provide an interactive learning space for cross-functional retail teams, scientists, and solution partners to ideate and simulate business-improvement concepts.
- The center’s scope has broadened from solely physical asset protection R&D to include comprehensive shopper experience, sales, and crime and loss control improvement research. The center can simultaneously conduct 1-2 dozen projects depending on their complexity and deliverable timeframes.
- The center contains three focused centers of excellence designed to improve how a retailer’s AP/LP team supports key shopper experience improvement by standing up the below CoEs.
- LPRC hypothesizes shoppers expect:
- Exactly what they came to buy is on the shelf, and self-serve, when they want it,
- Further many demand a very low-friction/hassle checkout experience, but current self-serve checkout is readily compromised due to errors, theft and fraud; and finally,
- Shoppers must always feel safe and secure during any store visit- even at night.
- The new Center’s Research Centers of Excellence will therefore include:
- On Shelf Availability Center of Excellence
Shoppers expect what they came for is readily available when and where they want it. This CoE is supported by custom as well as multiple LPRC Supply Chain Working Group, and LPRC Product Protection working Group lab and field projects.
- SmartCheckout Center of Excellence
Customer demand and online competition are leading all retailers to explore increasingly convenient but secure checkout options. This CoE was established to provide innovation, customer, offender and employee feedback evidence for enhanced layout, tactics, technology checkout solutions. The new center, as well as field testing in several retail formats, supports this CoE and its mission to maximize convenience while increasing basket size, minimizing costs and losses.
- Safe and Secure Center of Excellence
Shoppers and employees want to spend their time in safe environments; and fear of crime generates avoidance behavior. Shoppers have so many shopping options available to them, and avoiding your stores means direct revenue loss. This CoE’s mission is supported by lab innovations, as well as field testing in the LPRC Violent Crime Working Group’s multiple projects.
CoE (or Capability Center) Research Models:
- Discovery Research
- Journal articles, books, conferences
- iLabs
- Problem-oriented Research
- Deterrence and Disruption Action
- Prototype fabrication and deployment
- iLabs
- Store/location/data access
- Comprehensive Program R&D
- Volume solution production and deployment
- Store/location/data access
- Customized research for solution partners, retailers, and other organizations
