Retailers Estimate Shoplifting, Incidents of Fraud Cost $44 Billion in 2014
A new study from NRF PROTECT finds that retailers lose billions of dollars to shoplifting, employee and vendor theft and administrative error – collectively known as inventory shrink. According to the National Retail Federation/University of Florida National Retail Security Survey, retailers say inventory shrink averaged 1.38 percent of retail sales, or $44 billion, in 2014. The report was sponsored by The Retail Equation.
Specifically, retailers surveyed estimate that shoplifting accounted for the largest part of reported shrink in 2014 – 38 percent, followed by employee/internal theft (34.5%), administrative and paperwork errors (16.5%), vendor fraud or error (6.8%) and unknown loss (6.1%).