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According to University of Florida criminologist Richard C. Hollinger, Ph.D., who directs the National Retail Security Survey, the results indicate that in 2000, retailers lost 1.75 percent of their total annual sales to shrink, up from 1.69 percent the prior year. Hollinger said that the results of the survey should serve as a wake-up call to the retail industry that shrinkage continues to be a multi-billion dollar source of revenue loss.
The study, conducted by the University of Florida with a funding grant from ADT Security Services, Inc., a unit of Tyco Fire and Security Services, discovered that retail security managers attributed more than 46 percent of their losses to the thefts of disgruntled workers. In comparison, 31 percent of retail losses were the result of shoplifters. Employee theft was up 2 percentage points from the previous study.
Internal theft now costs U.S. retailers $14.9 billion annually, compared to shoplifting costs of $10 billion. Employee theft and shoplifting combined account for the largest source of property crime committed annually in the United States. The remainder of the annual retail losses are due to paperwork errors at 17.6 percent and theft by vendors at 5.8 percent, according to the data obtained by analyzing theft incidents from 116 of the largest U.S. retail chains.
"Given that the surveyed portion of the retail economy annually transacts over $1.845 trillion dollars, this percentage of loss is worth over $32 billion," Hollinger said. "This means that the single largest category of larceny in the United States is the crime that occurs in retail stores. This figure is larger than motor vehicle theft, bank robbery or household burglary combined."
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