For second year in a row, global survey finds shoplifting in India is most in the 42 countries surveyed, including US, China, Japan, Australia and Russia.
Accept it: We are a nation of shoplifters.
For the second year in a row, it was found that shoplifting by consumers and store staff in India is most in the 42 countries surveyed, leading to a loss of Rs10,000 crore.
According to the Global Retail Theft Barometer 2010, India has the dubious distinction of coming out on top with a retail shrinkage rate of 2.72% in the 12 months to June this year.
But it’s 15% lower than the 3.2% rate last year.
Shrinkage includes loss of goods due to staff theft, shoplifting by consumers, theft at vendor or supplier level and calculation errors.
In the survey last year, India had a shrinkage rate of 3.2%, also the highest.
The only good side to the data is thieving has come down from 3.2% to 2.72%.
Shoplifting by consumers led to 52.9% of shrinkage, while employee theft was the second largest factor at 23.3%.
Internal error and supplier fraud account for 17.3% and 6.5% of the total shrinkage in India, respectively.
Indian retail businesses lost $2.232 billion (over Rs10,000 crore) to shrinkage this year.
Retailers say consumers cut away radio frequency electronic tags and walk away wearing new garments from stores. But the rising concern is theft by staff.
Typically, large format stores or hypermarkets are more prone to theft than compact small format stores.
Viraj Nadkarni, chief executive officer with the retail chain Globus Stores Ltd, said shrinkage cannot entirely be blamed on consumers as a majority portion of it was taking place internally and in-transit.
“Retailers need to better their security systems to bring shrinkage levels down,” Nadkarni said.
Nikhil Chaturvedi, managing director, Provogue India Ltd, said shoplifting was normal all over the world.
Internationally, retailers are much more evolved and as we progress towards better security adoption, the shrinkage levels will come down significantly.
The highest shrink verticals in the Asia-Pacific region are apparels, fashion items and accessories, cosmetics, perfumes and health and pharmacy products.
The study has surveyed retail businesses in 42 countries and regions, including markets like the US, China, India, Europe, Japan, Australia and Russia.
The study by the Centre for Retail Research, Nottingham, was funded by Checkpoint Systems, Inc.
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