Due to household budget concerns forcing consumers to discover ways to stretch their expenditures farther, clever shoplifters are getting more aggressive and “brazen” in the run-up to Christmas, costing Australian shops US $ 15 million every day.
Supermarkets and department stores are ready for highly coordinated thieves to walk out with high-value items, including fashion and accessories, as Australians rush to shopping centres to take advantage of Christmas offers.
Even though the main Christmas shopping season is still a ways off, statistics from Auror, a retail crime intelligence and loss prevention platform, indicate that retail theft for the December quarter is already 20 per cent higher than it was at this time last year. In comparison, 92,000 incidences were reported in October and November of this year, compared to 76,800 events in the same quarter last year.
Sixty per cent of in-store thefts are conducted by the same 10 per cent of people, with organised retail criminals four times more likely to be aggressive than a typical customer. Many of these organised criminals have a “professional” approach to theft and may target five to 10 stores in a day in groups of three or four, stealing more than US $ 5000 worth of merchandise.
The major supermarket chains Coles and Woolworths have noted the growing effect that theft is having on profitability; Coles has noted a 20 per cent increase in total stock loss for the 2023 fiscal year.
Retailers are closely monitoring Australian spending this Christmas as they prepare for increased theft and aggressiveness, particularly in the wake of a record-breaking Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend in November that saw customers spend US $ 8.7 billion.
Bharat Tex Special Report 2026 
