Retailers struggle with cyber crime and organized retail crime (ORC) on a regular basis. But how do these illegal behaviors relate to one another. Tom Meehan, CFI, addresses this question in the most recent Future of LP column in the July-August 2016 issue of LP Magazine.
Meehan suggests that while cyber crime and ORC differ in how they affect retailers, they likely originate as a result of similar principles. Specifically, the “broken window” theory may serve as a common explanation for how crime starts both in the real world and in the online environment. From the column:
“For those not familiar with the theory, it proposes that a small amount of disorder in a given community (think a wall of graffiti) can eventually become the norm and can permeate throughout the area. The graffiti was never washed off, so now it becomes a part of that society. Eventually the graffiti artists will spread their work to other walls since they saw there was no action taken to remove the first wall of graffiti.
This theory is very similar to the career path of a shoplifter turned booster turned fraudster. The shoplifter isn’t getting caught taking small amounts of items, so they try their luck at larger items. Once they get into the lifestyle of stealing and reselling larger quantities of goods, they need to do it more and more to keep up the lifestyle.”
Check out “Bridging the Gap between Cyber Crime and ORC” to read the full column and discover how Meehan differentiates between the impact of ORC and the impact of cyber crime on the retail industry. You can also visit the Table of Contents for the July-August 2016 issue or register for a free subscription to the magazine.