When you see a shoplifter push a cart full of unpaid merchandise out the door, it’s easy to assume it is an isolated incident or merely a small loss of inventory. But this is rarely the case. Pushout theft is real, and this form of shoplifting is far more frequent than most retailers realize. Gatekeeper Systems conducted a real-world, ten-week experiment in a major U.S. supermarket to prove this point.

The first seven weeks of the experiment were surveillance, focusing on the number of pushout thefts and each theft’s value. The experiment’s final three weeks measured success after Purchek activation, using the same metrics; frequency and dollar value.

The results are quantifiable and alarming.