America’s Largest Retailer Says organized retail crime It has grown into a multi-billion dollar problem, but the effectiveness of strategies to solve it and Data validity questioned as a whole.
In recent years, companies such as home depot, Lowes, walmart, best buy, walgreens and CVS Organized thieves are robbing stores and reselling goods on online marketplaces.
they poured money Anti-theft strategyIt sells products such as plastic cases, metal detectors, motion-sensing monitors, and AI-equipped cameras, and warns that consumers may end up paying a price if the problem is not improved.
“Theft is an issue, more than ever,” said Walmart CEO Doug McMillon. told CNBC in December. “If it’s not fixed over time, prices will go up or stores will close.”
However, the issue is not as clear-cut as retailers and trade associations think.
National Retail Federation survey shows retail contraction Retailer costs $94.5 billion in 2021 $90.8 billion in 2020but the data is largely qualitative and collected from an anonymized set of retailers, so it cannot be fact-checked.
Additionally, the $94.5 billion loss represents an overall contraction, the difference between the inventory companies record on their balance sheets and the inventory they can actually sell. This difference accounts for items that are shoplifted, but also includes inventory damaged, lost, or stolen by employees.
According to NRF data, only 37%, or about $35 billion, is lost to external retail crime.
Recently, at least one major retailer exaggerated the problem.
“Maybe I cried too much last year,” Walgreens Chief Financial Officer James Kehoe said on an investor conference call in January when asked about the cutback. “We are stable,” he added, adding that the company was “very happy where we are.”
Yet law enforcement and retailers say organized retail crime is still a problem, and they say the data is behind it.
Scott Glenn, Home Depot’s vice president of asset protection, told CNBC, “In our world, we know crime is on the rise. “Our insider information tells us that this is on a year-over-year basis and is growing at a double-digit rate.”
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