Consumers wait an average of 7.7 minutes for products to be unlocked

It’s no secret that consumers are not exactly enthralled by the locked display shelves they’re increasingly encountering in stores. A Consumer World reader poll found 2 out of 3 shoppers did not bother to summon an associate when an item they were shopping for was locked up; a Retail Brew reader poll found even more, 4 out of 5, decide not to have a product they’re shopping for unlocked.

What’s been a mystery, however, is how long shoppers typically wait for products to be unlocked, or how common the practice of locking up products has become.

Mystery solved: Shoppers wait an average of 7.7 minutes for under-key items to be unlocked, according to data from RDSolutions, the 35-year-old data and analytics firm formerly known as RetailData. The data, which had never been published before being provided to Retail Brew, was conducted on the week that began in September 30 in 626 drug, grocery, and mass-market retailers in the US and Canada.