Receipt checks

Have you ever been subject to a receipt check when buying cosmetics? A trip to the average department store cosmetics counter can easily cost me several hundred dollars, as much as if I'd made a big ticket electronics purchase. Yet I can't recall ever being detained for a recipt check as a matter of course before being allowed to exit the store. Is it possible that retail corporations know that spendthrift female shoppers would be a lot less likely to submit to these procedures - and less likely to return to spend more - than male customers just trying to get their geek on?

Comments

[Amy Alkon]

Cosmetics are marketed as a luxury purchase, and I think the door frisk would be very contrary to that marketing. Furthermore, most of the high-end stuff is behind a counter, and you can't get it unless somebody digs it out of a case for you, so perhaps the receipt check is unnecessary. (Not that it's right in other arenas -- as you wisely put it, the burden of theft prevention should be on the business, in terms of innovation, etc.)