If total shrink hasn't changed, then neither has any of it's components, of if any has, then something else got better by the same amount, and so what's the problem? If theft losses went up but something else got better by the same amount, then npthing changed, and so why are they closing again?
Target is specifically being targetted? Suffering theft no one else is suffering? Walmart did something new to protect itself better and drove all the theft to Target? There is no reasonable way to have a stable total and yet Taget has some new drastically increased problem.
Total shrinkage not changing means there is no new or increased theft problem.
> Suffering theft no one else is suffering?
Other major retailers are experiencing the same problem and have closed stores for the same reasons.
But I'm not trying to write a defense of Target. You may be correct. You may be incorrect. There simply isn't enough data to accurately draw a conclusion and I'm just offended that journalists inflate stories that give extreme results but very weak foundations instead of you know... doing journalism correctly based on actual real data not suppositions based on a bunch of national averages as though they are accurately depicting actual shrink in a specific store in a specific market.
From the panicked noises made by this CEO and his media amplifiers, you'd think losses must be up by a factor of ten.
The fact that total losses are relatively constant gives the lie to the entire narrative.
I'm not really for or against Target. I just feel that the quality of using some tangentially associated data while interesting really isn't enough to make assertions that "the data tells a different story" or that Target is covering up internal problems. It's bad journalism to just do some analysis on some data you happen to have and then claim someone who has the data's assertion is totally false.
Other potential obvious flaws in methodology: 1. Analyzing the quantity of reported theft calls probably only means thefts where the police were able to make an arrest. Not th 2. Different thefts might result in different dollar amounts and quantity of thefts is probably less important to target than total value of theft. 3. Smaller stores may experience less quantity or value of theft, but have higher levels of overall theft, because they are smaller and have less sales and less traffic.