Guest editorial

Citation

Guthrie, J. and Todd, S. (2006), "Guest editorial", International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Vol. 34 No. 11. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijrdm.2006.08934kaa.001

Guest editorial

About the Guest Editors John Guthrie is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Marketing at the University of Otago. His research interests include the changing structure of retailing and the “retail-scape,” the growth of non-traditional retailing, retail crime and loss prevention (author of the NZ Survey of Retail Crime and Loss Prevention), the use of geographic information systems in the retailing industry, and staff training. He also undertakes research on farmers' markets in New Zealand, with emphasis on their growth, their role as business incubators, and competition with other players in the distribution channel. He has extensive experience with sports organisations in New Zealand, including the NZ Masters Games. John is on the Executive of the New Zealand Bobsled and Skeleton Association, with responsibility for Olympic selection. He is the Director of the NZ Centre for Retail Research and Studies, and Chairman of the South Pacific Association of Retailing Educators.

Sarah Todd is currently the Associate Dean (Academic) for the School of Business at the University of Otago. Sarah joined the School of Business in 1989 in the Department of Marketing and is a founding member of the Department's Consumer Research Group, which has undertaken several major studies into New Zealand consumers' lifestyles and values. The most recent being New Zealand in the Twenty-first Century: A Consumer Lifestyles Study (2006). Other research interests include ethical and sustainable consumption, and understanding children's development as consumers.

Numerous studies around the world provide evidence that retail crime is a multi-billion dollar industry. The impact of retail crime is significant and far reaching for retailers, suppliers, customers, society and those who work to prevent it.

From a research perspective retail crime provides seemingly endless opportunities for researchers. The fact that the subject embraces the entire distribution channel and comes in a multitude of shapes and sizes adds to its attractiveness as a research area.

Understanding the facets of retail crime is essential if any progress is to be made in reducing levels of retail crime.

Traditionally, “shrinkage” is described as the total losses attributed to theft by supplier, theft by customer, internal theft, and administrative error. None of these categories is mutually exclusive and “shrinkage” can occur through a combination of two or more of the categories.

Advances in technology have provided retailers with opportunities to tackle retail crime by developing good loss prevention programs. CCTV, POS data capture systems all play a role but at the end of the day it is how society addresses the issue and how retailers create a culture of honesty that really count.

This Special Issue on Retail Crime and Loss Prevention provides a valuable platform to present a small selection of research papers. We could have focused on theft by customer, or administrative error, or theft by supplier. Or we could have focused on understanding why people steal. All of these areas are important parts of the retail crime puzzle. However, we have opted to focus on “theft by employee” or “internal theft.” Our reason for doing this is that we believe that the problem of retail crime needs to be addressed from within a retail organisation. The power in the distribution channel has moved in favour of the retailer and we believe that the retailer is in the best position to put their own house in order first, and by so doing will send positive signals to suppliers and customers.

The papers selected for this Special Issue have a common theme of internal theft but each takes a different perspective. The first two papers attempt to apply existing theory to retail crime. Paper 1 (Bailey) proposes that the application of Planned Behavior Theory to theft by employees could provide insight into how and why employees steal from their employers. Paper 2 (Mishra and Prasad) is based on an application of Game Theory and analyzes the use of two methods, internal control and random inspections of the locations at which employees work, to deter employee theft. Papers 3 and 4 explore theft by employee from an inside perspective. Paper 3 (Alstete) uses an innovative methodology to explore employees' opinions on the best way to improve loss prevention. Paper 4 (Bamfield) analyzes the relative importance of different types of staff crime and examines key dimensions of the offending population. This is consistent with a trend toward research into “hot stores” and “hot products.” Paper 5 (Chapman and Templar) takes the stance that measures and measurement systems must reflect the context to which they are applied requiring that the contextual issues relating to retail shrinkage must be identified as a necessary precursor when measuring shrinkage. This is important as it acknowledges the “intuitive nature” of the information in many of the reports produced on retail crime, and highlights the fact that in order to go forward research must focus on improving the accuracy of the measurement of retail crime. This view is reflected in the opinions of experts on “future directions for research in retail crime” that are presented in Paper 6 (Guthrie and Guthrie).

John Guthrie and Sarah ToddGuest Editors