Has retail’s focus on cutting costs boosted retail crime?

Ever since the pandemic shut down much of the retail and other industries, figures around retail crime have been steadily rising. With people more anxious and frustrated, customer aggression became more common, and with an ever deepening cost-of-living crisis (which includes increased prices at the till), theft is becoming more of an issue. 

So much so, that several retailers are starting to make more dedicated efforts to stamp it out. Myer, for example, recently announced that it would be partnering with undercover police officers to curb theft in its department stores.

However, according to Professor Michael Townsley from Griffith University’s Criminology Institute, most of the retail crime taking place across Australia and New Zealand is spontaneous, accidental and not especially complicated. 

“In our recent report, we asked loss prevention managers the most common tactics used, and the most common are still very simple tactics that require no planning,” Townsley said. 

“It’s stuff like putting something in a handbag, or leaving the store with no attempt to hide. They don’t require any advanced knowledge, just the gumption to do it.”

These kinds of theft can be designed out of the retail experience, Townsley said, but most retailers aren’t doing enough. A third of loss prevention officers Townsley surveyed were running a one-man team across a national business, making it difficult to implement a large-scale loss prevention strategy.

Many retailers have also invested in technology to solve the problem, but it hasn’t always worked. 

Self-scan checkouts, for example, are hailed as an example of retailers successfully improving their staff-to-customer productivity ratio – with one staff member regularly presiding over several customers serving themselves. But this has also made it easier for everyday shoplifting to occur. 

“Lots of us accidentally shoplift,” Townsley said, “because quite often the technology is implemented poorly, or there’s problems with scanning.

“I think it’s the case where [retailers] really didn’t think shoplifting would increase with self-checkout, but it’s made it really easy.”

This ‘technology as a silver bullet’ mentality has had the detrimental effect of allowing retailers to further cut floor staff levels, which has made it easier for theft to occur.

Add to that an exodus of experienced personnel in the security industry, said Townsley, and there is less institutional knowledge in-store to keep product safe from those that actually do intend on stealing.

But it’s more complicated than that…

Beyond accidental or ‘lazy’ shoplifting, organised crime has also increased across the industry. Townsley believes this is a result of pent-up demand after it was made far more difficult to steal during the pandemic.

Retail theft actually fell during the pandemic, due to the fact that many stores had guards stationed at their entrances and exits, as well as the fact that fewer people were allowed in in-store at one time, making for fewer opportunities to steal without being noticed. 

Now that stores are open, organised-crime syndicates are back in full force, and retailers need to give some careful thought to how they want to address it. 

According to Townsley, organised criminals can’t be dealt with by simply making it more difficult to steal at the checkout: rather, a more thoughtful and holistic approach needs to be entertained. 

“For any action that is taken at a physical store, we need to consider what the potential displacement effect will be,,” Townsley said. 

“If a store becomes so impregnable that it’s actually harder to attack than a softer target, like a retailer’s distribution network, you could expect a shift of attention. I wonder what it might take for a syndicate to target a delivery van, or a truck distributing stock from a DC to a store.”

Additionally, the syndicate may move to defrauding a retailer through its online channels, or simply move to another target: an outcome that could prove devastating for smaller, less secure businesses.

That’s not to say that a retail chain shouldn’t protect itself. Rather, a wider, more systematic approach is most likely the best way forward

The post Has retail’s focus on cutting costs boosted retail crime? appeared first on Inside Retail.