Encouraging shoplifting prevention with quality relationships: A theory of planned behaviour perspective

Purpose: The cost to supermarkets from shoplifting is a growing problem. Despite huge investments informal security measures, supermarkets experience shrinkage and face heavy financial losses. Hence, thispaper explores an alternative approach to shoplifting prevention. The purpose of this paper is to propose thatquality relationships between a supermarket and its customers could be a viable strategy for shopliftingprevention. A conceptual model is presented at the end of this paper for encouraging shoplifting preventionusing a theory of planned behaviour perspective.Design/methodology/approach: A systematic search of literature on relationship quality was conducted.Research papers were shortlisted from peer-reviewed journals published between 2007 and 2016. For theconvenience of readers, studies on relationship quality are presented in six cross-checked informationcategories in a table.Findings: This study produced two results. First, it finds three antecedents of supermarket-customerrelationship quality. These are as follows: a supermarket’s participation in corporate social responsibility andcause-related marketing initiatives, a supermarket’s service quality, and a customer’s attachment to asupermarket’s place/location. Second, there are three major effective dimensions of relationship quality.These are as follows: satisfaction, trust, and commitment. The proposed model incorporates factors from bothfindings, to measure a supermarket-customer relationship quality that may influence intention of customersto engage in shoplifting preventive behaviour.Originality/value: This research paper has reviewed the existing literature to utilise it in the context ofshoplifting prevention, and developed a novel model/framework for effective shoplifting prevention with atheory of planned behaviour perspective