Loss Prevention Research Council Weekly Series - Episode 87 - ORC Crime Trends and the 2022 Top Consensus Predictions
LPRC Team will be in NYC! LPRC has input on Shoplifting Escalation! In this week’s episode, our co-hosts discuss the winning and losing country economies during COVID-19, iPhone messaging vs Androids, silicon and chip shortages continue, and the top 25 predictions for 2022. Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more!
Shoplifting is surging across America with dangerous and costly consequences
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/07/business/retail-theft-shoplifting-robbery/index.html
A just published CNN article highlighted the growing retail crime trends in USA. The article was titled, “Shoplifting is surging across America with dangerous and costly consequences”.
Highlighting some of the recent very visible smash and grabs, our own LPRC Cory Lowe was quoted.
"These are people who make a living stealing and reselling. This is not a one-time opportunistic or need-based robbery," said Cory Lowe, an expert on retail crime and research scientist at the Loss Prevention Research Council.
Lowe said retailers are very worried about the escalation in these organized group-led "smash-and-grab" robberies in multiple cities around the country.
"The anatomy of these attacks show they are more aggressive, dangerous and happening more frequently," said Lowe. "When I talk to retail loss prevention veterans, the best comparison they come up with is what crime was like in New York in the 1970s. But even then, it was more street robberies and not like retail theft as brazen as this."
Another consultant that was quoted mentioned that For every $330 worth of products stolen, a retailer has to sell an incremental $300,000 worth of goods to break even.
Best Buy's (BBY) CEO Corie Barry said in November that the retailer has seen a jump in theft at its stores by gangs of thieves. Some of these incidents have involved weapons such as a gun or crowbar, she said.
"This is traumatizing for our associates and is unacceptable," Barry said during a call with analysts in November. "We are doing everything we can to try to create [an] as safe as possible environment."
Although organized shoplifting sprees were on the rise even before the pandemic, Lowe said that post-Covid lifestyle adjustments have made it easier for offenders to get away with the crime.
"Think about mask wearing. Pre-pandemic, would we have ever thought about everyone in a liquor store wearing a mask covering half of their face and allowing them to remain anonymous?" said Lowe.
A confluence of other factors also have contributed to the spike in dangerous retail robberies in the last two years. These include reduced in-store staffing that leads to less surveillance and the ease with which thieves benefit from a lack of regulation on reselling stolen items online, said Lowe.
So have rising thresholds for what constitutes a felony offense, he added. "What I do worry about is as a society if more people start to imitate these crimes," said Lowe.
In a survey of 55 retailers, more than two-thirds said the pandemic increased the overall risk of fraud and crime for their companies, according to the National Retail Federation's 2021 National Retail Security Survey. The report showed that 57% of retailers surveyed indicated a rise in organized retail crime during the pandemic.
Some 50% of retailers surveyed reported an average dollar value loss of merchandise of at least $1,000 in 2020 compared to 29% in 2019. Overall, organized retail crime costs retailers an average of $700,000 per $1 billion in sales, according to the NRF.
The Economic Winners and Losers of the Pandemic
https://www.statista.com/chart/26540/gdp-change-in-selected-oecd-countries-between-q4-2019-and-q3-2021/
From Statista, here are the country economies based on GDP changes in selected OECD countries between Q4 2019 and Q3 2021 in percent
Top winners are:
- Ireland which grew just over 22%
- Chile which grew just over 10%
- And Norway which grew 3.5%
Top 3 losers were:
- Spain which declined 6.6%
- Portugal which declined 3.2%
- And the UK which declined 2.1%.
Predictions Consensus: What the Experts See Coming in 2022
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/prediction-consensus-what-the-experts-see-coming-in-2022/
Let me end this week by highlight more 2022 predictions, this time from Visual Capitalist. Their top 25 predictions include:
- Rich Countries will move from pandemic to endemic phase with COVID
- Big Tech will get bigger
- The Creator Economy will flourish
- Expect a highly unequal global recovery
- Ransomware will ramp up
- Social commerce picks up steam
- Inflation slowly eases off
- Regulation is coming to crypto
- Bullish on European and Japanese equities
- Meta’s Metaverse plans fall flat
- Climate change is back in the spotlight
- Growing influence of Environmental, social and governance factors
- Increased volatility
- China will have a rocky start to 2022
- Onshoring trend continues
- Interest rates will go up
- You will be hearing a lot about NFTs and Web3
- Continued growth of crypto
- Supply chain disruptions ease off, but slowly
- 4% to 5% global GDP growth
- Another banner year for electric cars
- Industrial real estate remains hot
- Modest gains for equities
- Shifting labor dynamics with workers in the driver seat
- Geopolitical tensions will flare up
Based on the hundreds of predictions we analyzed, the general mood can be described as cautiously optimistic. For starters, the global economy will likely keep growing, but not at the rate it did in 2021. World GDP will grow 4.5%. USA will grow 4%, Eurozone 4.3%, and China 5.3%.
