In a previous life, I did loss prevention. The average shrink rate in retail in the USA is 2%. That means 2% of the merchandise leaves the store without being paid for.
An average Walmart does millions in sales each day. Conservatively 2% of one million is $20,000.
Thousands of dollars of unpaid merchandise leaves a big retailer every single day. It’s part of the cost of doing business. That’s also why online retailers are cheaper. They don’t have to deal with external theft. They still have internal theft.
Shrink is the industry term. It’s merchandise that isn’t paid for and isn’t there when inventory happens. Theft is most of it, both by customers (external) and employees (internal). It’s also things that aren’t rang up right at the register, damaged merchandise that isn’t removed from the system correctly. It’s a big umbrella term.