I've tried reporting on this fact here many times. Deceptive companies and entities with agendas have been wildly embellishing claims of crime as the reason for their performance problems.
Target (TGT) is a prime example. In PR and commentary, they kept falsely implying theft as the cause of shoddy results. But their dry and raw financial results showed theft was minuscule and that the real causes could be linked to executive ineptitude and poor decision making.
Target was not alone in this, as others used this false smokescreen. And it was broadly picked up on by naive and complicit media and civilians. Those who pushed this false narrative knew (correctly) that the more simplistic and salacious fables about caravans of thieves running through lawless cities would get traction, and that only a few of us would actually read the data and recognize when a big lie was being spread.
For those interested, shrink is not theft. Shoplifting is actually only one small part of it. Shrink encompasses many things, most of them fully under the operational control of the executive management team. When management makes the choice to cut jobs and mishandle returns, the corresponding cost is higher shrink. When management decides to use crappy packaging or the lowest bid shipper, that drives up shrink. Buying shoddier perishables that have to be discarded… more shrink. The examples go on and on.
So when their shrink balloons, it's easy for them to exploit false social narratives and pretend their poor decisions and poor results weren't management's fault… it must be because of “rampant” theft, because they and most people think the big shrink number means theft.
One exception has been the plain speaking head of Costco (COST) who has mocked industry peers for using this trick. He outlines that theft is only up an insignificant amount, and that any retailer who actually did have a theft problem could easily have mitigated it in a variety of inexpensive ways. Of course since the theft excuse wasn't authentic, that's why they didn't do the mitigation measures, belieing that they knew their PR excuses were deceptive.
$COST CEO's most recent commentary is that their own most commonly stolen items are paper towels, toilet rolls, bottled water and watermelons. And that they took measures to reduce that by having a segmented “under the basket” focus at checkout.
The same Costco CEO has debunked other myths around inflation, labor and cost pressures. Sadly, he's retiring this month so we may be losing that lone voice of truth in this industry.
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