The theft amount doesn't need to equal the total sales of the store to be a problem. I don't know Walmart's margins, but grocery stores have on average a 2% pro

The theft amount doesn't need to equal the total sales of the store to be a problem. I don't know Walmart's margins, but grocery stores have on average a 2% profit margin. If average daily shoplifting increases by 0.5% of average daily sales (an additional $1 of product stolen for every $200 of product sold), the profit of a grocery store drops by 25%. If average daily shoplifting increases 2% of average daily sales, the profit of the store drops to zero. (Typically in these kind of stores employee theft of merchandise is non-zero, so the customer merchandise theft is impacting the business on top of the baseline employee theft numbers. If you're interested in this sort or thing, it tends to be discussed under the heading of "lossage")