Less shrinkage

The downward trend that began five years ago continued once more in 2006. The average shrinkage rate in the European retail trade came to 1.24 per cent of turnover, which amounts to 0.8 per cent less than the previous year. This represents the smallest reduction for five years, according to the survey from the Centre for Retail Research in Nottingham.The overall loss from shrinkage in the European retail trade amounted to € 29 mio last year, or € 220 per household in the countries surveyed.The 6th European Retail Theft Barometer considers the reasons for this to be that nearly half of the products most likely to be stolen, such as designer clothes and brand-name articles, are not protected against theft. The survey was funded by Checkpoint Systems, a world leader in the field of shrinkage man-agement solutions based on radio frequency technology. However, the survey comes to the conclusion that the European retail trade is on the right track in its fight against shrinkage, in spite of such deficits when it comes to article surveillance. Altogether the retailers invested € 8 bn in security spending last year. As earlier surveys have shown, there is a direct link between the amount invested in security systems and the general reduction in shrinkage.At a total of € 14.159 bn, shoplifting by customers still accounted for the largest proportion of shrinkage – from petty theft to organised gangs. When compared with the previous year, though, the market researchers were able to identify a slight reduction from 49.2 to 48.8 per cent here. On the other hand, internal theft by dishonest staff rose for the second time running to reach a total of € 8.925 bn. This amounts to a 30.7 per cent share of the total shrinkage (2005: 29.9 per cent).A comparison of all the 24 European countries surveyed reveals that Germany has the lowest shrinkage rate of 1.07 per cent, apart from Switzerland (0.92 per cent) and Austria (0.96 per cent). The highest rates are to be found in Czechia (1.42 per cent), Slovakia (1.4 per cent) and Hungary (1.38 per cent). In western Europe the negative ranking list (i.e. highest to lowest rate of shrinkage) is headed by Finland and Portugal (both at 1.34 per cent), ahead of the UK and Greece (both at 1.33 per cent), then Sweden (1.32 per cent), followed by France, Norway and Spain (1.29 per cent each).What are the methods being used in the battle against shrinkage? Most widespread is electronic article surveillance (for 35.9 per cent of the…