SHOPPIING

CNN - Shoppers can’t stand when toothpaste, deodorant and other items are locked up behind glass display cabinets at stores. Customers, accustomed to taking whatever they want off a shelf, don’t like to push a button on the display case and impatiently wait for an employee to come open it so they can buy something for $5. No surprise then that locking up products leads to lower sales for retailers.

“When you lock things up, for example, you don’t sell as many of them. We’ve kind of proven that pretty conclusively,” Walgreens CEO Tim Wentworth said on an earnings call this month. But the company plans to keep doing it anyway.

That’s because “it is a hand-to-hand combat battle still” to stop merchandise from being stolen, Wentworth said. Walgreens is looking at “creative things” to stop theft without resorting to locking up products, Wentworth said, but he didn’t “have anything magnificent to share” yet.