The 2017 National Retail Security Survey (NRSS) input form is now available for retailers to provide shrinkage and other loss prevention benchmarking data. Dr. Richard Hollinger, professor emeritus at the University of Florida and consultant to the National Retail Federation (NRF) who sponsors the survey, said, “I strongly encourage all loss prevention executives to participate in this survey so that the results represent the entire retail industry. With retail’s growing consolidation, submitting your company’s data is more important than ever.”
Benchmarking is an important exercise for LP organizations to participate in and why the magazine supports and reports on many of the surveys conducted by the various associations, including NRF, the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), as well as the Loss Prevention Research Council (LPRC). No matter what association your company is a member, it benefits the entire retail industry to participate in the NRSS and similar studies. That is also why the magazine recently instituted an ongoing benchmarking column to hopefully add to the industry’s knowledge base.
“With a constantly evolving retail landscape, loss prevention becomes more complex every day,” said Bob Moraca, NRF vice president of loss prevention. “LP professionals have been working diligently to find advancements in technology aimed at deterring crime in our industry, sometimes even before it happens. But as our techniques get more sophisticated, so too do the criminals. The NRSS has been invaluable in allowing LP executives and others understand the causes of retail crime and its changing methodology, and allowed the industry to respond to changing crime patterns and technological enhancements that deter retail crime.”
The 2016 NRSS, which accumulated data from 2015 retail results, found inventory shrinkage averaged 1.38 percent of retail sales, or $45.2 billion, up by $1.2 billion from 2014. Just under half of those retailers submitting results reported increases in overall inventory shrink with shoplifting accounting for the greatest cause—the second year that external theft surpassed internal theft. Results also showed robberies were increasing significantly for retailers. These types of retail theft statistics are critical for LP organizations to consider when comparing their results with others in the industry.
Links to the 2017 survey instrument were sent out the last week of March via email. If you did not receive the email, please contact Hollinger at rhollin (at) ufl (dot) edu or Moraca at moracar (at) nrf (dot) com.