Crime costs shopkeepers $1 billion a year
Crime is costing brick and mortar 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 were not capable of detecting ‘‘every instance of a crime’’. It instead looked at the store’s ‘‘shrinkage’’ of stock, which could be caused by theft, fraud, or errors and 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 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 stock takes, may have a less detailed understanding of shrinkage levels,’’ the report said.
Retail NZ spokesman Greg Harford said most retailers had an automated point of sale, and goods were accounted for as they reached a store. mistakes from
Harford said this meant retailers could track their stock to at least within $10 of its value.
Shoplifting was by far the most recorded incident. Of the 290,000 incidents that retailers reported to Retail NZ, shoplifting incidents made up almost 250,000.
However, only one in every three shoplifters was reported to the police. Refund, online and credit-card fraudsters were reported to police less often.
Employees caught committing crimes were reported even less often than fraudsters, with one in every four caught then reported to police.
Retail NZ chief executive Scott Fisher and Professor John Guthrie from the University of Otago said the overall impact of crime on a business includes the fear and trauma felt by employees, the stress to business owners, the cost of policing, and the courts and corrections processes.
Most of these impacts were not included in the $1b figure.
Harford said police did quite well with retailers who experience violence, intimidation and property destruction but he would like to see a dedicated retail crime unit formed.
Those surveyed included Retail NZ’s members, members of the New Zealand Association of Convenience Stores and the New Zealand Crime Prevention Group.