Targeting retail loss with Kalibrate Location Intelligence

There is no shortage of organized retail crime these days; turn on the news and you will see stories of mass-theft all across the country. However, it was still shocking when Target recently announced that they expect their inventory loss will surpass $1B, approximately a 65% increase from 2022 loss totals. Understanding crime around your store, or potential retail site, is now a critical component of a retail business plan. Using the Kalibrate Location Intelligence platform, we analyze Target locations in Houston relative to Applied Geographics CrimeRisk database.

It is no secret that Target has been struggling financially over the last year, consistently missing earning expectations. CEO Brian Cornell has even spoken about the challenges posed by retail loss in relation to the decline in earnings. How does overall crime around the store locations impact potential losses? Using our CrimeRisk data mapped on Kalibrate’s Location Intelligence platform, we examined Houston Target stores to determine which sites were most at risk for increased loss. Areas shaded in dark red pose the highest crime risk, while lighter areas are less susceptible to overall crime.

As you can see on the map, inside the 610 loop there are four Target locations in areas susceptible to higher crime, and one, which happens to be near Rice University, in a lower crime area. As you move out towards the suburbs, stores are located in areas with increasingly less crime the further you get outside of the city core. While crime rates, especially property crime, are on a rising trend throughout the country, there are still pockets of the city where overall crime rates are lower,

If you are unfamiliar with the database, CrimeRisk is a geographically detailed and comprehensive crime assessment database that provides a highly accurate view of the relative risk of specific crime types for any geographic area including Census blocks. It is not a database of crime occurrence, but rather, the relative risk of any location compared to the United States in its entirety. CrimeRisk has been crucial for Kalibrate clients. “Kalibrate has a wide range of available datasets that help our clients to improve profitability. We have many retail and restaurant clients who find the CrimeRisk data to be of value in assessing the opportunity for new store deployments, and in quantifying the operational risks associated with existing stores” says Dave Huntoon, Vice President.

You can find more information on Location Intelligence, and inquire about AGS’ CrimeRisk here: Kalibrate Location Intelligence | Kalibrate Global