Every year the Global Retail Theft Barometer is released which is the largest and most authoritian report in the world on this subject. Currently it is collected from 222 retailers world wide with total sales over $700 billion US dollars. It makes fasinating reading.
Currently according to the report in 2013, the global cost of retail crime stood at $180.38 billion. This translates into a $63.56 US per person tax, imposed on honest people by retail criminals. It is probably the biggest crime in the world today.
Globally the loss rates for shoftlifting range from about 1% to 1.7%. The average rate is now globally about 1.29% which is a slight drop from 1.36% last year. In Australia they record about 1.06% .
I have always said if you do not know your shop lifting figure assume about 1% as a starting point. Also you can add to that worldwide of 0.80%. which is the spend on loss prevention. So on a 75% margin, based on this I would say an Australian retailer is looking at a loss of about 1.6% in Australia.
World wide the biggest losses were recorded by pharmacies at 2.65%, stationers/office supply stores came in at 1.60% and pet shops were 1.4%. The report stated that it believes one of the reasons for the higher rates was that these types of stores have a lot of small, easily concealed items that are often on open display, they have a high re-sale value and can also be for personal use.
The worst periods of the year for shoplifting in Australia was during Christmas/end-of-year holidays.
If you accept the US figures as similar to Australia of the total shoplifting you can expect
- Dishonest employees will be about 42.9%
- Public 37.4%
- Administrative (accounting mistakes, pricing errors and process failures) about 10.8%
- Supplier fraud (no delivering what they said) 8.9%
The last two in particular show the importance of a good computer system.
The report states that “the implementation of CCTV cameras in Australia aided shrinkage reduction in 2013–2014” something I would agree with.
If you want your own copy of the report which is extremely detailed please contact
Juliet Chan
Marketing Specialist
Checkpoint Systems (AUST/NZ) Pty Ltd
Juliet.Chan@checkpt.com
www.checkpointsystems.com
