INDUSTRY FOCUS
Retail crime, shrinkage and security study
Crime, shrinkage and security are key interests across the retail sector.
Portsmouth Business School is working with Crime&tech srl, a spin-off company of the Università Cattolica of Milan, to carry out a study on retail crime across 11 European countries: Belgium, Finland, France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Sponsored by Checkpoint Systems, the study will:
• investigate trends in shrinkage and theft across different sectors, countries and regions
• identify socio-demographic, economic and criminal contextual factors
• estimate the total cost of losses and its impact on companies and citizens.
This new study uses an innovative methodology, combining an online survey with analysis of specific store level micro-data, plus qualitative data obtained through the survey and follow-up interviews.
This method has already been used successfully by Crime&tech in a 2017 study on “Retail Security in Italy” and gives a more nuanced understanding of shrink, crime and security, which is vital for the industry to address these complex areas.
How can you help?
1) Participate in the online survey. This is available in English, French, Italian, Polish, Russian and Spanish and gathers data at a company level for a given country for the period of 2015 to 2017 in areas such as shrinkage as a percentage turnover, most stolen items, security measures etc.
The survey can be accessed via the following links:
English
Spanish
Italian
French
Polish
Russian
You will be asked to register first, then you will receive a confirmation via email, allowing you to access the survey using your email and password.
The survey closes on 30th September 2018.
2) Provide store level micro-data about shrinkage and theft in the last three years. All data will be collected by Crime&tech in line with ethical, privacy and personal data protection regulations (GDPR – UE 2016/679). Crime&tech is also certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2013 for its activity in data collection and analysis. A specific Excel spreadsheet is used to collect this data, which is held securely and confidentially by Crime&tech, and can be accessed here.
For further information, particularly about the collection of store level data, please contact:
Lorella Garofalo at Crime&tech srl (lorella.garofalo@unicatt.it +39 027234 3014/3715) or Sally-Ann Krzyzaniak at Portsmouth Business School (sally-ann.krzyzaniak@port.ac.uk +44 239 284 4624)
