ORC reselling on online platforms has been and continues to be a major problem for many retailers; however, there is a lot that is unknown about which platforms. For example, in discussions with retailers, many believe that the most sophisticated ORC groups are reselling on major e-commerce sites; however, many investigators know that a substantial amount of merchandise is being sold on social media sites that have a marketplace, private and public social media groups, and through online social networks.
Therefore, to better understand which online websites are most problematic, we asked the respondents to list up to the top five most problematic websites according to the amount of merchandise being sold on the site in the areas they serve. 246 respondents listed at least one website and 57 respondents listed five websites. We took these responses and categorized them according to the sites listed, and tabulated which were mentioned most often.
This report is broken down into two sections. First, we focus on the sites that were listed as the most problematic among the top five of the respondents. Second, we will focus on which sites were mentioned most often among the 757 responses we received in all of the respondents’ top five lists.
Websites Listed as the Most Problematic
We asked the respondents to list the top five most problematic websites according to the amount of stolen merchandise being sold on the site. The first table below tabulates the number of times different e-commerce sites were mentioned as being the most problematic (the sites that respondents ranked as number one most problematic). The top three most frequently mentioned sites include: (1) Facebook, (2) Ebay, and (3) OfferUp.
However, the table below provides all of the most problematic sites according to all of the responses from all of the respondents. In other words, Table 1 focused only on the sites that retailers listed as the number one most problematic. Table 2 includes all sites that were mentioned, regardless of rank. Once again, the most commonly mentioned site is Facebook (234 mentions); in fact, Facebook Marketplace was mentioned more than any other site (153 mentions). The second most frequently mentioned site was Ebay (148 mentions), and third was Offerup (128).
Additional Considerations
These sites were listed as being the most problematic by the respondents to the ORC Across the States survey according to the amount of stolen merchandise being sold on the sites. The results suggest that a lot of the merchandise is being sold on social networking sites such as Facebook, as well as reselling sites like Ebay and Offerup.
However, these responses are driven by investigations—that is, the respondents are only able to list sites that have been investigated. Previously, we have referred to this as the lowest hanging fruit problem, where retailers are more likely to be aware of reselling that is easiest for them to be aware of or to investigate.
The full results of the ORC Across the States study are being issued in a series of reports on the LPM site. The LPRC would like to thank Sensormatic for their generous support of this survey. Watch the LPM site for upcoming articles detailing the fascinating results of this survey, including: how ORC is changing; violence and ORC; job stress; and more!
