UPDATE: The truth about Target
popular.info
On September 26, Target announced it was closing nine stores "because theft and organized retail crime are…contributing to unsustainable business performance." Target said that before making the decision to shutter the stores, it had "invested heavily in strategies to prevent and stop theft and organized retail crime." But ultimately, Target claimed, those efforts failed to make those stores "successful."

Never trust the corporations excuses.

PS: I wasn’t sure if this was a good fit for this community, but I couldn’t think of another. Any suggestions?

  • draneceusrex@lemmy.world
    102·
    1 year ago

    I have a friend that is a DM of a rapidly expanding gas station/restaurant chain here in southeast. They just opened self-checkout lanes in their stores. I asked about theft/shrink and he said it’s a tiny part of their bottom line at this point in a GAS STATION, and with the traffic they are getting, the convenience/cost of labor makes up for it in spades. Target, Walmart and the like are full of shit.

    • MrZeeEnglish
      32·
      1 year ago

      edit: There’s my shit memory again. I went to look for the number Target claimed. It appears it wasn’t a specific % growth in organized theft. It was % growth in violent theft. Otherwise, I think the concept I laid out stands, subbing in “violent theft” for “organized retail crime.” The quote: “Unfortunately, safety incidents associated with theft are moving in the wrong direction. During the first five months of this year, our stores saw a 120% increase in theft incidents involving violence or threats of violence.” Remainder of my comment unedited:

      And the “organized retail theft” claim they were making was a clear red herring. I can’t remember the number Target claimed off the top of my head, but their claim was something like “organized retail theft has grown 200%”. Yes, a 200% increase makes it sound like a huge problem, but is meaningless without the context of how big it was before the increase. If it had gone from 2% of sales to 6% of sales, yes that is a really big and impactful 200% increase. But evidence shows it didn’t. It appears to have gone from an insignificant portion of sales to a number 3x as big that is also insignificant.

      So Target took the approach of (1) find a topic that sounds big and scary: “organized retail theft”, and (2) find a way to spin the stats related to that topic to make them sound big and scary: 200% increase (or whatever it was).