Shoplifting is a problem in the retail industry affecting the bottom line of many businesses. For the mom and pop stores, those loses can be the difference between having profits at the end of the year, or thinking about closing their doors. The Wal-Marts, Targets, and Kmarts stores can probably weather the storm a bit, but the little retail stores can be a different story. What can you do to deter shoplifting from your store? The advice you hear from many sources (including this site) is that great customer service can play an important role in the prevention of shoplifting. Greeting your customers at the store and offering help to locate specific merchandise, can be a powerful deterrent for the shoplifter. Cameras, and signs warning them that they will be prosecuted, can send a clear message that they cannot ignore. For more about this topic follow the links below.
Retail Design to Deter Shoplifters
Talk of retail design generally revolves around ways to draw customers into stores to generate sales.
Good design, however, can go beyond that, preventing retail loss (shrinkage) attributed to the behaviour of the not-so-welcome store guest – the shoplifter.
While RFID technology is proving to be beneficial when it comes to retail security, technology shouldn’t be the only method relied on.
Interior design doesn’t usually receive as much attention as the built environment when it comes to retail security plans, but it can offer considerable theft-deterrent strategies.
Recent data from the Checkpoint and Smart Cube’s Global Retail Theft Barometer 2013-2014 states that shrinkage costs retailers an annual US$128 billion globally. Of this, 38 per cent is attributed to shoplifting, 28 per cent to dishonest employee theft and the remainder to administration/non-crime losses and supplier fraud.
What This Guide Does and Does Not Cover
This guide reviews ways to reduce shoplifting (merchandise theft from the shop floor during business hours), which is a common crime that affects large and small retailers alike. Particularly at risk are self-service stores that sell small items that are easily concealed in clothes or bags. Several offender groups are responsible: (1) opportunistic thieves, not readily distinguishable from ordinary customers, who steal items for personal use (sometimes called petty shoplifters); (2) more determined thieves, usually operating alone, who steal small quantities of goods to sell, often to support drug habits; and (3) groups of organized thieves who steal large quantities of merchandise for resale (often referred to as professional or organized retail theft).
Shoplifting is just one of the crimes that occur in the retail environment. Other crimes requiring their own analyses and responses include:
- Burglaries of retail stores
- Credit card and check frauds by customers
- Harassment of immigrant shopkeepers
- Robbery of retail shops (e.g., convenience stores, gas stations, liquor stores, pharmacies)
- Smash-and-grab burglaries
Judge Backtracks On Walmart Shoplifter’s Lifetime Ban From All U.S. Stores
Earlier this week a Walmart shoplifter said she likely wouldn’t follow a court order barring her from stepping inside any of the retailer’s thousands of locations. Turns out, that might not have been such a brazen statement after all, as the judge who handed down the lifetime ban clarified that he didn’t really mean to prevent the woman from entering all stores.
NJ.com reports that Mount Olive Municipal Judge Brian Levine revised his ruling, saying that he never intended to include a nationwide ban as part of his sentence for the 64-year-old woman, who admitted to shoplifting $78 worth of vitamins last December.
The original ruling, which included one year of probation, a $268 fine and 15 days of community service, stated that the woman was barred from all Walmart stores in New Jersey or elsewhere.
