The 2007 National Retail Security Survey - Highlights
Once again, this year’s report overwhelmingly shows that employee theft is often the largest cause of inventory shrinkage at retail organizations. Loss prevention is the largest battle retailers have to fight, in order to maintain and improve their business objectives. For every step forward in the fight against internal and external theft, shoplifters continue to find advanced methods to steal from their employer or their local retail outlet.
As pointed out in the report, retailers reported an average of 38.76 employee theft apprehensions and 36.08 employee theft terminations for every $100 million in sales. Only 11.8 prosecutions were made for every $100 million in sales, and the average dollar amount per employee theft incident came out to an astonishing $1,442.67. Additionally, it should be noted that employees in a position of management were responsible for a larger percentage of theft than hourly sales associates, which is why the dollar amount per incident is so inflated. Managers can typically place themselves in a position to be able to not only steal from their employer, but steal in bulk.
The rates of employee theft continue to climb because those retail employees that were caught but not prosecuted are then gaining employment at another retailer where the cycle of employee theft begins anew.
Please look over this website and see how the NRMA is your best solution to combating the retail industries’ largest contributor to inventory shrinkage. Just look over our testimonials and ask us for more information. Our current members will attest to the measurable results they experience as a direct correlation to their part in using and contributing to the NRMA retail theft database.
Below are some additional helpful figures
pulled from this year’s NRSS report.
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According to the 2007 National Retail Security Survey conducted by Dr. Richard Hollinger at the University of Florida:
- Retailers report an annual inventory shrinkage of $34.8 billion.
- 44% of all inventory shrinkage is attributed to employee theft. This translates to an employee theft price tag of $15.2 billion.
- The average admitted dollar loss per employee theft incident was a record $1442.67 which is higher than the 2006 figure of $1,306.59.
- The average dollar loss per shoplifting incident was $344.91.
- 34% of all inventory shrinkage is attributed to shoplifting.
- 15% of all inventory shrinkage is attributed to administrative & paper error.
- 4% of all inventory shrinkage is attributed to vendor error.
- 3% of all inventory shrinkage is attributed to an unknown error.
- Retailers are forced to pass along these substantial profit losses in the form of higher product prices.
- The average length of employment for a dishonest worker was 9.53 months before getting caught for dishonesty
Click here to download an Adobe Acrobat version of the 2007 National Retail Security Survey: Final Report.
Warning: This file is password protected. Please send an email to Dr. Hollinger (rhollin@crim.ufl.edu) with your name, title, address, and company and he will email you the password allowing you to open the file.
