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High Wages, Store Layouts, and Receipt Check-ins Discourage Thieves and Serve as a Secret Weapon in the Fight against Competitors

Costco is not the ideal place to shoplift.

Between the chain’s members-only policy, the Costco employees assigned to scrutinize your receipt at the door, and the bottlenecking that can occur at the warehouse’s exit, thieves have a few factors working against them.

That’s not to say that theft doesn’t occur at Costco; stealing is a reality throughout the retail world. All retailers experience inventory shrinkage, the term for merchandise gone missing due to shoplifting, errors, or employee theft.

But Costco seems to have a distinct advantage over its rivals when it comes to shrink. CFO Richard Galanti told Barron’s Andrew Bary that the warehouse chain’s shrinkage amounted to 0.11% to 0.12% of sales. That’s significantly lower than the 1.33% of sales that retailers lost to shrinkage in 2017, as estimated by the National Retail Federation. So what sets Costco apart?… Business Insider

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