How Shoplifting Works and How to Prevent It

By David Cutherell

Retail loss (called shrink or shrinkage past the industry) is ordinarily associated with shoplifting. True, shoplifting is a major contributing gene: A 2018 study by the National Retail Federation (NRF) institute that it is responsible for 36.5% of the full loss. The remaining 63.5% come from other sources, like employee theft, administrative errors and vendor fraud.

Even so, shoplifting is the single biggest source of retail compress, so in this article I'd similar to share some strategies for spotting information technology and dealing with information technology.

Who Shoplifts?

External shrink falls into three broad categories:

  1. Opportunists
  2. Individual habitual thieves
  3. Organized retail crime (ORC)

Opportunists

The large bulk of shoplifters are opportunists, which are people who do not necessarily come up into a store with the intent to steal. Frequently, they get to a store to actually buy something, simply they find that the item may be too expensive for them. Opportunistic shoplifters generally don't consider stealing until they find themselves alone, unobserved by employees or surveillance technology like security cameras.

If they're defenseless even once, most opportunists will never steal once more. Many opportunistic thieves are often surprised when they are defenseless. They don't really empathise how retailers protect themselves from shoplifting using employee observation or security cameras. In fact, many shoplifters I have interviewed were surprised to meet nosotros had camera footage of them. I've often seen opportunists who don't even look at the photographic camera before stealing an item, either considering they don't believe the camera works or because they don't think they're being watched at all.

With opportunistic shoplifters, many retail loss prevention experts emphasize deterrence over apprehension. Although these shoplifting incidents usually don't make upwards a bulk of external shrink, loss prevention experts take institute that making certain shop visitors know they are being observed is an constructive method of deterring theft or other unwanted behavior.

Individual Habitual Thieves

An individual habitual thief is someone who gets a rush out of stealing. Some practise it for the money — they resell the stolen goods. Just some are merely hoarders — they desire something simply for the sake of having it. In my time working in retail loss prevention, I have apprehended thieves who accept hundreds of thousands dollars' worth of merchandise in their homes just don't do anything with it.

Private habitual thieves are oft great customers. Your employees know them and talk to them, and they're often in your customer loyalty plan. If a thief like this is caught stealing, he or she might be deterred for a short while. But eventually, they'll go back to their former habits.

Organized Retail Law-breaking (ORC)

The group of shoplifters that do the about damage to a business organization's lesser line is organized retail criminal offense, or ORC. These thieves enter a store with the purpose of stealing specific trade. No affair what store they enter, they think of how to defraud that system. ORC thieves operate according to their perceived gamble of being defenseless at that store. A thief working equally a part of an ORC grouping has no issue walking out of a store without stealing anything if they recollect they can't get away with it. Withal, this does not mean they won't return in the hereafter to come across if they tin can try over again.

A common ORC tactic is working in a team, where multiple thieves enter a store to distract employees from the theft. In this situation, some of the thieves go to different departments to draw store employees' attention, either by asking questions or acting suspiciously. While the loss prevention squad is focused on these decoys, the real thieves can so steal their target merchandise.

ORC thieves also sympathise felony laws almost shoplifting. If the dollar minimum for felony theft is $1,000, then an ORC thief will steal $999 of trade then they can avert the risk of a felony charge. In contempo years, many municipalities have modified their felony theft statutes, increasing the threshold for a felony from $250 to $one,000 or more than. One effect of this is that at present fewer thieves face felony charges. These changes are typically driven by the municipalities' increased costs of transferring arrested thieves into custody or bogging downwardly the court systems.

Some, but not all, community leaders meet retail theft as a victimless crime, believing that processing theft charges takes resources away from other crimes accounted more serious. This places a greater pressure on retailers to deter ORC from happening in their stores instead of relying on legal arrangement.

Why Do Thieves Steal?

There are multiple motivations for theft, of course. Opportunists steal considering of the circumstances: An particular they want costs more they expected, or they feel similar they tin can go away with it, only this one time. This is why deterrence works so effectively on this blazon of a thief. He or she is not fully committed to stealing from a store. If would-be shoplifters know they are beingness observed, they would rather avert the risk of being defenseless and walk abroad.

The individual habitual thief tends to steal specific items, rather than items that are but convenient. They may specialize in merchandise they know they can easily resell, or they steal just for the thrill of committing a criminal offense. Oftentimes, theft is a lifestyle for these shoplifters, and they may not see it equally a criminal offense at all.

ORC is a much more organized and goal-oriented blazon of shoplifting. These thieves don't steal because they tin can't afford to buy something: They steal purely to make a profit from reselling merchandise, and they are the most determined kinds of thieves. ORC groups know laws in their expanse well, and they know what kind of merchandise is in need, making them both efficient and effective shoplifters.

Understanding the motivations behind each blazon of thief helps you place the theft you are facing. For example, if yous find that you are missing smaller items of low value, this points toward opportunistic thieves. If your inventory check shows that you are short on high-value items such as cosmetics, babe formula or vesture, this is often a sign of ORC, every bit these products are easy to resell for profit or only render to the store it was stolen from.

Superlative 3 Virtually Effective Ways to Prevent Shoplifting

One of the biggest obstacles for retailers who are struggling to prevent external theft is internal awareness inside their organization: Are your shop associates aware of shoplifting? Do they understand how to deter theft? When employees are trained to spot and prevent theft in stores, they become a highly effective part of your retail loss prevention strategy.

Since store associate sensation is one of the nigh effective deterrents against theft, the retailers who take a loftier employee turnover have a trouble. An constructive theft deterrence strategy involves the commitment of employees who are trained to provide outstanding customer service and discover signs of shoplifting. But with a loftier turnover rate, a retailer has to constantly train new employees. This tin be difficult if employees are constantly joining and leaving your organization, peculiarly during the holiday flavor.

One retailer I worked had loftier turnover and a massive shortage in their denim department. They were losing more production than they were selling, but they did not know what was happening. Eventually, we discovered that employees didn't bother telling their supervisors when they saw a lot of product missing. Instead, they would just supercede the missing merchandise with product from the stock room. Because of this, the retailer did not discover the loss until they did inventory, which fabricated it fifty-fifty harder to pinpoint the problem. This loss could have been prevented entirely with proper employee training: If the store assembly were trained to report missing production as soon as they noticed it, the retailer would have caught the compress much sooner. Below are three of the most constructive ways I plant to train your store associates to deter shoplifting:

1. Create a consistent employee approach

The number-i way to deter thieves, whether they're opportunists or experts, is also the simplest: Greet every customer who enters your store. Employee approach has been proven to be the most effective method of preventing theft from happening in the first identify.

For case, one of the fundamental means of deterring shoplifters is to ensure that customers are never completely solitary in a store. An employee can practice this by being aware of their surroundings, observing visitors who go to low-visibility areas such as dorsum corners and keeping an eye out for potential groups of thieves.

2. Ensure the shop environment is make clean and well-organized

Having an organized store not only makes it easier for your customers to browse your products merely easier for your team to see if annihilation is missing. For case, if you have a disorganized pile of jeans on display, it can exist like shooting fish in a barrel for a thief to steal a pair or 2 without anyone noticing. In contrast, a neat display table with small stacks of jeans would deter the opportunistic thief from fifty-fifty thinking of stealing at all.

This applies to all areas of your store, including displays, dressing rooms and stock rooms. A well-lit, clean and organized retail space communicates to store visitors that your employees are paying attention.

3. Staff your store with enough employees

Many retailers have inverse how they staff their stores, organizing their staff past floor rather than by department. To further minimize costs, retailers have also turned toward technology designed to control shortage, such as devices designed to monitor and control inventory. Still, no surveillance system or RFID tracking solution works similar an employee who is defended to their department, understands their products and approaches every customer in their area.

Instead of trying to supplant the human being element of retail, companies should expect to their store associates every bit a resource for deterring theft. In fact, reducing the corporeality of staff you have in store can drive a greater demand for locking down your merchandise. This can exist a huge detriment to sales: If your products are not easily accessible to honest customers, you might not sell a lot.

In the end, retail isn't about protecting production — information technology's nigh serving customers and driving sales. That'due south what makes a people-based approach to theft deterrence and then effective: A well-trained store squad is the best way to find the right residual between access and security.

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David Cutherell , CFI is senior vice president of business process automation at Prosegur USA. He spent 28 years in retail loss prevention, starting as a store detective and working his way up to senior leadership positions at Macy'southward and Bourdines. At Prosegur, David leads Information technology and business automation teams, with a special focus on business intelligence and information security.