The "Five-Fingered" Xmas Discount

[dales]

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The most shoplifted items of the season


.By Joanna Douglas, Shine Fashion and Beauty Editor | Fashion – Mon, Dec 5, 2011 6:16 PM EST.. .


While most of us are out buying holiday presents some people are getting their gifts with a five-finger discount. Ad Week is reporting that one in every 11 people walks out the door with at least one item they didn’t pay for. With shoplifting up six percent this year, retailers stand to lose a whopping $119 billion of merchandise to shoplifters in 2011. And it’s not just kids with sticky fingers—75 percent of shoplifters are adults, most of whom have jobs. We know people are hunting for holiday deals, but this amount of theft is both surprising and sad.

Ad Week spoke with loss prevention experts on why shoplifting is the highest it’s been in five years. "Most shoplifters simply succumb to temptation, “Johnny Custer, director of field operations for Merchant Analytic Solutions, told Ad Week. “But add a sense of desperation because of the economy and holiday pressures, and you have the recipe for theft soup." Barbara Staib, a spokesperson for the National Association of Shoplifting Prevention, told Ad Week, "Seventy percent of shoplifters tell us they didn't plan to shoplift."

Exactly what are people stealing? Ad Week has compiled the top 10 most shoplifted items of 2011 and they’re truly bizarre.

1. Filet mignon
So many people are tucking choice cuts of meats under their jackets that supermarkets are now considered the stores with the most theft.

2. Jameson
Those with an unquenchable thirst for booze just help themselves to a free bottle of expensive liquor.

3. Electric tools
Apparently the the most common items men nab are electric toothbrushes and power tools. At least they’re fighting cavities.

4. iPhone 4
Electronics like smartphones and video games are high risk items, and one research group claims 100,000 laptops are stolen annually from big box stores.

5. Gillette Mach 4
Anyone who uses non-disposable razors knows they’re pretty expensive, so in tough financial times people don’t want to pay for them anymore.

6. Axe
The men’s deodorant and body wash we love to hate are often stolen in mass quantities and resold at flea markets and corner stores. Dial is popular amongst thieves too.

7. Polo Ralph Lauren
Clothing theft is up 31 percent since 2009. It’s hard to look good in a bad economy, so some score fresh threads the illegal way.

8. Let’s Rock Elmo
The Sesame Street toy topped the Toys’R’Us "Hot Toys" list this year, so parents are stealing this must-have toy for their kids if they can’t afford it.

9. Chanel No. 5
Who wouldn’t love a bottle of this popular woman’s fragrance? Expensive perfumes make up nearly four percent of loss in stores that carry them.


10. Nikes

As Ad Week points out, some shoppers wear flip-flops into a store, try on a pair of sneakers, and walk out wearing them. Sneaker heads will do whatever it takes to score the kicks on their wish list.

[Lord Jim]

one in every 11 people walks out the door with at least one item they didn’t pay for.

Wow...

That's a stunning statistic...

If it's accurate, it's an appalling commentary on the decline of basic values....

However, I would be curious to know what methodology was used to arrive at that number....

[Gob]

Insurance claims

[Scooter]

The way stock control is done these days, retailers can identify shrinkage pretty accurately.

[Lord Jim]

Yeah, you can do that, but how do you come up with that "one out of eleven" number?

You can't simply take the number of items that have gone missing and divide by the number of customers who have come through the door...

If you do that, you're going to get grossly skewed results if your objective is to determine the number of individual people engaging in shop lifting...

There are people who shoplift for a living who steal hundreds of items a year; there are others who do it on a regular basis, but a little less profligately...

To say nothing of the items that go missing because of theft by employees....

[loCAtek]

Crosspost:

Yes, at Home Depot, with the bar code, we could tell how many of anything was in stock. The cash registers automatically updated the count from those codes as well; in close to real time; telling you what was sold that day. This was all networked nationally, we could tell which stores had how much of anything.
Part of my job, at the local level, was to update the counts, when obviously we didn't have product X on the shelves, in the number indicated on the computer ...meaning it had been nicked.

In fact, sometimes we were given up to the minute APB's of 'stuffers' moving from store to store, with full descriptions and MO's.

ETA: To answer your question-Security Cameras Jim. The technology is very advanced; think TiVo- we know product X went missing on this and such a day- so the digital footage is pulled up from that time period and location.
We know how many customers come into the store, by the cameras; and we now how much product was sold by the registers. If those numbers don't match, it's easy to deduce the statistics.

With that, I find it easy to resist the temptation- I know it's likely you've been caught on camera.

Just my neighborhood Kwik-E-Mart, has its 'Wall of Shame' of folks it has on film digital capture. The stills are easily recognizable, and the thefts have been reported to law enforcement.
So, maybe they got away with jacking a Redbull once, but they can never enter that store again.

[The Hen]

I always was astounded at the stealing of Mach 3 or 4 razors.

I am an interview friend (for adolescences who have been picked up by police and no responsible adult can be found to stand with them to observe proceedings).

On 4 interviews for stealing that I have attended, two of them involved Mach 3 or 4 razors.

I mustard mitt, it IS a good razor.

[BoSoxGal]

I can tell you anecdotally that shoplifting is big where I practice; I had lots of those cases as a defense attorney, and more when I first started prosecuting. Not so many now that I am doing mostly felonies.

I just did a plea agreement with a gal who was then convicted of her 25th theft offense. Imagine how many more there were where she wasn't caught?!?

I am often bemused by the content of the thefts; at WalMart folks steal a lot of personal hygiene items, not just Mach razors, but also whitening strips, which are pretty expensive. I'm sure a lot of these items are re-sold on eBay or in the perp's own community.

[Scooter]

Fusion Power is better.

Pharmacies up here often keep razor blades in an enclosed case; when you lift the lid to take out a package, a chime rings to alert staff.

[Lord Jim]

I just did a plea agreement with a gal who was then convicted of her 25th theft offense. Imagine how many more there were where she wasn't caught?!?

Well that kind of goes to my point...

That person probably falls into the "does it for a living" category"...People like that skew the average...

I certainly don't deny that shoplifting is a big problem...

But the sentence I quoted from the article Dale posted seemed to be claiming that something like 9% of all shoppers are shoplifters, which is a very different sort of claim...

I question the validity of that, and as I pointed out if they are arriving at that number by simply totaling up the number of shoppers who come into the store, (which I'm sure they can track) and dividing it by the number of pieces of merchandise that go missing, (which I'm sure they can also track) that conclusion is invalid.

To draw a simple analogy:

Let's say you had a town with a population of 10,000...

And in this town, in a given year there were 1000 burglaries...

You could not legitimately make the claim, based on that, that one out of ten of all the residents in the town are burglars...

It would be far more likely, (as arrest statistics would seem to indicate in the case of shoplifting) that a much smaller percentage are committing the bulk of the crimes.

[dgs49]

When I was in retailing a lifetime ago, the biggest shoplifters were the employees. I would suppose that the retail trade has come up with measures to reduce what once was a plague.

I also doubt the one-in-eleven number, but I have no frame of reference. I don't know anyone now who has admitted to me that they are a shoplifter, but it was common among acquaintances when I was a teenager.

[Guinevere]

Fusion Power is better.

Pharmacies up here often keep razor blades in an enclosed case; when you lift the lid to take out a package, a chime rings to alert staff.

They are doing that with deodorants now, too. At least here.

You know the economy must really be stinking...

[Crackpot]

Or at least the criminals are

[loCAtek]

'Round here, I've noticed it's the homeless who do that, since they can't regularly shower.

[Jarlaxle]

They also lock up Listerine...bums drink it for a buzz. (It's about 25% alcohol.)

[rubato]

One out of 11? Now that is a discouraging number.

Of course it also means that 91% are honest ... (or more honest than to pilfer)

yrs,
rubato