Depending on what financial report you read, the average income for Americans fall between $45K and $54K a year. That’s before federal, state, and local taxes are taken out. Take out your mortgage payment, car payment, car insurance payment, living expenses and other monthly payments that you have, and you are left with a very little amount left over for saving for retirement or saving for your children’s college education. During the holidays, many people around the country are faced with the prospect of having no gifts for christmas, getting a loan to buy gifts, or in some instances shoplifting some gifts for the holidays. For retailers, this is a season where sales are at the highest, but shoplifting is as well. Preventing shoplifting during the holiday season is very important for these retailers, because their profits depend on having the least amount of shoplifting in their stores.
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How stores plan to fight organized retail crime during the holidays
With Halloween over, retailers are in full-fledged holiday season mode. Which means they’re gearing up for Black Friday, holiday staff schedules, stampedes of customers… and theft. That’s right — the holiday season might bring stores a nice sales bump, but it also brings an increase in shoplifting. And retailers are stepping up efforts to crack down on the crime.
We’re not just talking about customers stealing a pack gum in the checkout line. Loss prevention specialists have their eyes on a much bigger target.
Organized retail crime (ORC) is a strategic and highly sophisticated brand of shoplifting where a network of professional thieves work together to rip off retailers. According to a survey from the National Retail Federation (NRF), organized retail crime is on the rise, with 100% of retailers saying they have been a victim in the past 12 months. Furthermore, 83% said ORC activity had increased in the past year.
“There are existing crime organizations, like drug dealers, and these groups looked at the retail world and saw it was very lucrative to steal heavy volumes of merchandise and then sell it,” said Robert Moraca, vice president of loss prevention at the National Retail Federation. “The access to selling online has made it even easier.”
Along with organized retail crime, standard shoplifting and employee theft costs retailers approximately $42.5 billion in 2015.
Walmart Will Deploy Thousands of ‘Holiday Helpers’ to Shorten Checkout Wait Times
It was shoppers’ #1 request.
The next time you find yourself in a long wait for checkout at Walmart WMT -1.11% , don’t be surprised if a store worker clad in bright yellow and a Santa hat helps you find the shortest line.
Eager to build on recent improvements in its long-weak customer satisfaction scores and win shoppers’ favor during the peak shopping season of the year, Walmart is deploying “Holiday Helpers” to all of its 4,500 or so U.S. stores during the upcoming months. These workers, clad in yellow vests to make them easily identifiable to customers, will be tasked with speeding up checkout time by, among other things, fetching items that shoppers may have forgotten, so they don’t lose their places in line; helping to unload shopping baskets at the registers; and if it’s very busy, opening a cash register.
At the same time, these helpers, regular Walmart workers trained to use cash registers but looking to pick up some extra hours, will be there to add some fun to a retailer often seen as drab. These workers will be wearing festive Santa hats and bright red sashes inscribed with “Holiday Helpers,” and handing out candy canes. The no-frills shopping environment doesn’t cut it anymore, even for a discount retailer, and the helpers’ cheer will be all the more important given the lavish Christmas displays Target has planned.
As Christmas shopping season looms, retailers across Europe are bracing themselves for increases in footfall and subsequent spates of theft. Groceries, including roasting joints and bottles of spirits, are the most at-risk products.
New research sponsored by Checkpoint Systems – provider of merchandise availability solutions to the retail industry – has revealed that retailers will see shoplifting erode their profits over the coming months, as they begin to gear up for a bumper Christmas period.
Apparel, luxury foods and electronic accessories are expected to be among the most stolen items this festive season, with higher quantities of merchandise put out on the shop floor, additional door displays, temporary staff and increased footfall all contributing to the high losses across the country.
The study, underwritten by an independent grant from Checkpoint Systems, was carried out by Ernie Deyle, a retail loss prevention analyst, and provides an analytical view of business risks that major retailers face during this holiday season. The 13 markets covered in the report span North America, Europe and Asia, and include the US, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, UK, Australia, China, Hong Kong and Japan.
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