Crime costs retailers $1 billion a year
Crime is costing retailers nearly $1 billion a year, most of which they never recover, University of Otago research has found.
The 2017 Retail Crime Survey is the second iteration of a study done 14 years ago.
Eighty-one per cent of all the retailers surveyed said they had been affected by retail crime.
The study found most smaller retailers couldn’t detect ‘‘every instance of a crime’’.
It instead looked at the stores’ ‘‘shrinkage’’ of stock, which could be caused by theft, fraud, or errors and mistakes from administrators.
The average amount of stock that disappeared from shelves this year was 1.6 per cent of their total stock. Of that 1.6 per cent, 1.3 per cent of it was because of crime.
‘‘For larger retailers, this number will be well known and understood. Smaller retailers that do not have sophisticated stock management systems, or that do fewer regular stocktakes, may have a less detailed understanding of shrinkage levels,’’ the report said.
Retail NZ spokesman Greg Harford said most businesses had an automated point of sale system for stock management, and goods were accounted for as they reached a store.
Harford said this meant retailers could track their stock to at least within $10 of its value.
Shoplifting was by far the mostrecorded crime. It made up almost 250,000 of the 290,000 incidents retailers reported to Retail NZ.
Despite it being so common, only one in every three shoplifters was reported to the police.
Those surveyed included Retail NZ’s members, members of the New Zealand Association of Convenience Stores and the New Zealand Crime Prevention Group.