In loss prevention, Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS) is one of the most common and effective strategies to protect stocks against theft. There are a lot of industry-specific terms and acronyms about EAS and Loss Prevention. These terms may get confusing.
To provide some assistance, we will list the most common terms and guide their meanings.
EAS
1. Antenna
In EAS, antenna is a very important component. The antenna continuously sends out electronic signals to sense passing active tags. Antennas can be placed in different places, in store doors, under the floor or even in dressing rooms.
2. Hard Tag
Hard tags or security tags are exactly the same as they sound. They are plastic(ABS) tags used to protect clothes and other goods. Within each tag is a transmitter whose signals can be detected by an antenna.
Hard tags come in various shapes, such as pencils, squares and flips. They have different advantages. It consists of a series of components: tags, pins, and magnetic locking mechanisms.
3. Label
Security labels work in the same way as hard tags. Soft label is a disposable paper thin self-adhesive tag. It has good adhesion. And you can attach it to the merchandise easily. Soft labels come are available in a variety of frequencies, styles, sizes, and shapes for different kinds of merchandises.
Security labels are more suitable for use in stores with more products or when hard tags are not feasible. You can paste labels on goods at the store or the point of manufacture.
4. Detacher
Employees usually use “detacher” to remove security tags from products.
5. Deactivator
Staffs use “deactivator” to deactivate security labels(cancel the label’s signal). As a result, an item can leave a store without alarm.
6. Source Tag
Source tag is EAS tag or label applied at the point of manufacture rather than in-store.
7. False Alarm
There are many reasons for false alarm. For example, the staff did not remove or deactivate the security tags or soft labels correctly at the checkout. Products with security tag are too close to EAS systems. Undiscovered security labels exist in the antenna detection area. EAS system malfunctions.
8. Tag Pollution
When an active EAS tag is brought from one retail store to another store with a working EAS system, the antenna alarm sounds.
9. Detection Rate
Detection rate is the percentage of the number of active tags detected by EAS system to all active tags passed through.
10. Pin
Pin is the components of hard tag that passes through the product and locks into the tag. Pins have different needle sizes. The larger the size of the needle, the harder it is to remove it illegally.
Loss Prevention
11. LP
Loss Prevention(LP) refers to measures taken to reduce inventory losses in retail environments. It includes techniques from preventing shoplifting to calculating inventory.
12. Retail Shrink
Retail shrinkage or shrinkage is inventory loss. This may be caused by many factors, such as shoplifting, employee theft, administrative errors, supplier fraud or inventory damage in transportation.
13. Shoplifter
Shoplifters are those who deliberately take merchandise from a retail store without paying. There are many motives for shoplifter, such as seeking interests and looking for excitement.
14. Organized Retail Crime
Organized Retail Crime(ORC) is a professional shoplifting, supply chain theft and other organized crime committed by criminal gangs in a retail environment. This type of theft is usually clearly defined and strategically targeted to high value items.
15. Employee Fraud
In the retail industry, employee fraud usually involves cash register transactions, fraudulent refunds, gifts scams, fraudulent suppliers and supplier collusion.
16. Analytics
Analysis is an electronic analysis of the retail environment data. It includes information collected at the point of sale, such as sales data and returns. Of course, it also includes customer traffic statistics, inventory, sales transactions, etc.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please click here to contact our friendly EAS staff.