The 2009 National Retail Security Survey - Highlights
As usual the overwhelming cause of retail shrink is not attributed to vendor, administrative or paper errors. Instead, theft continues to be the driving force behind retail inventory shrinkage, at 78% of all shrink in 2009, (Of that portion, 43% is attributed to employee theft and 35% is attributed to shoplifters).
On the brighter side, this year's survey does reveal that 2009's overall shrinkage rate of 1.44% is tied with 2007 for the lowest in the 18 years the survey has been conducted. While this represents progress in Loss Prevention efforts, the dollar amount that was stolen is still a record level. The difference is that total sales volume is also very high.
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 2009 National Retail Security Survey conducted by Dr. Richard Hollinger at the University of Florida:
- This year’s shrinkage rate of 1.44% translates into $33.49 billion in annual loss ($14.4 billion to employee theft and $11.7 billion to shoplifters) from the 106 corporate retail chains that participated in this year’s survey
- Of those surveyed, the retail markets averaging more shrink than the average amount of 1.44% included Sporting Goods, Women’s Apparel, Discount and Mass Merchandise, Supermarket, Men’s & Women’s Apparel, and Children’s Apparel.
- Beyond employee theft and shoplifting, the remaining segments of shrink were 14.5% administrative error, 3.8% vendor fraud and 3.3% to “unknown” errors
- The top five market sectors for employee theft included jewelry and watches (58.6%); women’s apparel (53.6%); pet and animal supplies (50%); shoes (46.7%), and supermarket and grocery stores (45%).
- The five market sectors with the least amount of employee theft included books, magazines and music (27.5%); consumer electronics, computers and appliances (27.5%); sporting goods and recreation products (35.5%); department stores (39.6%), and office supplies and stationery (37.7%).
- An average of 0.69% of all shrink was attributed to financial (non-merchandise) losses. (i.e. cash theft, check fraud, credit card fraud, refund fraud and Internet fraud).
Note: 12.9% of Employee Theft cases involved assistance from non-employees or ORC (Organized Retail Crime).
Click here to download an Adobe Acrobat version of the 2009 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.
