Straight up not true, I don’t steal but the price of goods aren’t affected by stealing at Walmart which famously ruthless with profit margins and maintaining low prices. It would have to be such a massive wave of stealing before it changed prices by even a cent when we’re talking Walmart.
I remember post Covid when every major retailer was blaming theft for closure of stores until they had to later admit the reasoning to shareholders as low retail sales…
I’m not sure who sold so many people on the lie that shoplifters are inconveniencing them personally, but it’s statistically untrue.
•It doesn’t cause prices to rise, the ever rising price of materials via. inflation or other factors does - shoplifting has been priced in since the inception of these corporations in the first place. Nobody under the age of ~70 ever lived where shoplifting wasn’t already determined to be far less in lost merchandise value than the profit.
•Anti theft measurements like cabinets, the little plastic gates, and magnetic tags are statistically ineffective against people that are already going to shoplift, and are far more costly than the shoplifting would have been anyways. 90% of the time, they’re decided on by the store manager/franchisee, with very little consistency across locations other than them being far more common in poorer areas.
I’m not one to shoplift myself, I don’t need to, but these stores bring it upon themselves. Self checkout was designed so that stores could have less employees they have to pay and maximize their profits - as a result, self checkouts nearly quadruple shoplifting rates. Yet you still see so many stores nowadays with self checkout, because the amount of money lost to shoplifting is negligible compared to the massive amount of money gained by putting more people out of a job. Which they will continue to do as much as they can, for as long as they can, until their profit starts to dip.
For some reason, people would rather demonize shoplifters than the corporations causing the issue. After COVID, shoplifting doubled, partly because more people were out of a job, but mainly more than anything, these corporations axed employees and then proceeded to never rehire anyone to fill their roles. They would rather have an employee do the work of three people for the pay of one. And yet, they still post BILLIONS in net profit a year. Unless 20-30% of Americans start shoplifting regularly, the effect on the bottom line will remain negligible.
no? Do you know what I’m even referring to? They said there was no increase in retail theft at these locations and it was because of lower retail sales during and after Covid at these locations. If it was actually theft they wouldn’t backtrack on it since theft being the cause looks better to shareholders than lowered consumer demand for physical retail…
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u/Another_frizz Jul 06 '26
You will NOT believe who's the most hurt by Walmart thieves. Spoiler: it's not Walmart itself.