Winning Trends: In Loss Prevention

Customers and employees steal both merchandise and money; employees provide sweetheart deals for their friends and family, and missed markdowns and clerical errors create “paper shrink.”

We received responses from 96 retail respondents, with demographics as follows:

Functional area: Thirty-four percent of respondents represent store or field management; 24% are from finance; 14% of respondents are part of merchandise management and 18% are from logistics/supply chain or IT. The remaining 10% are from marketing, procurement and sales organizations.

Job title: Fourteen percent are C-level executives; 24% are VPs; 39% are directors; and the remaining 23% hold internal consulting and staff positions.

Revenue: Twenty-five percent of respondents have annual revenues of $50 million or less; 24% have from $51 million to $499 million; 11% have revenues of $500 million to $999 million; and 39% have revenues of $1 billion or more.

Segments: Sixty-eight percent of respondents represent general merchandise and apparel (GMA) retailers; 19% are from categories such as grocery and convenience stores; and 14% come from DIY, furniture, food and other miscellaneous retail segments.

Year-over-year comparable-sales growth rates: Assuming average comparable-revenue growth of 3%, 41% reported better-than-average results; 44% reported average results; and 14% self-identified as worse than average.