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Cost of Shoplifting:
Theft from stores, including employee and vendor theft, cost retailers many billions of dollars per year. Independent retail studies* have estimated theft from retail stores costs the American public 33.21 billion dollars per year. Depending on the type of retail store, retail inventory loss ranges from .7%-2.2% of gross sales with the average falling around 1.70%. Whole retail store chains have gone out of business due to their inability to control retail theft losses. And worse yet, the costs of these losses are passed on to us...the consumer.
Shoplifting losses vary by store type, but can account for about one-third of the total inventory shrinkage. It is estimated that shoplifting occurs 330 - 440 million times per year at a loss of $10-$13 billion dollars. Nationwide, that equates to 1.0-1.2 million shoplift incidents everyday at a loss rate of $19,000-$25,300 dollars stolen per minute. When you factor in employee and vendor theft, this sum skyrockets to an estimate of over $33 billion dollars stolen per year.
Cost of Employee Theft:
According to the University of Florida 2005 National Retail Security Survey, employee theft was estimated to be responsible for 47% of store inventory shrinkage. That represents an estimated employee theft price tag of about 17.6-billion dollars per year. This astounding figure makes employee dishonesty the greatest single threat to profitability at the store level.
The 2003 study found the average dollar loss per employee theft case to be $1,762.00 compared to $265.40 for the average shoplifting incident. Despite these facts, most retailers mistakenly focus their loss prevention budgets on shoplifting.
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