If someone shoplifts something on the BDS list, does that still qualify as boycotting the brand? Is this a stupid question?

Not a stupid question. If you steal sabra hummus (as an example) from a grocery store, are you stealing from Sabra or from the grocery store? I don’t know how big grocer accounting works but I’m sure someone knows.

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22 points

My understanding is that for most grocery stores, you’re stealing from the grocery store. They’re responsible for theft and stuff like food going bad. However, if enough people steal a certain brand, the store might stop carrying it.

I think the notable exception to this is Costco, where Costco never actually owns the stock in the store; it’s the brand’s until you buy it.

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13 points

I wonder how much theft actually happens from Costco, it seems like the hardest store to actually steal from given the size of most objects and that they have staff to check your cart n shit at the exit

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13 points

Smuggling a gallon of mayonnaise out of Costco in nature’s smuggling pocket

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2 points

I don’t know enough about how “loss prevention” works to say this is foolproof but if you bring a personal shopping cart in and pack your groceries into that, it’s easy to fit a few more things that you just forgot to pay for at the self checkout…

(My only concern with this is because you’re stealing some things and buying others, if they see it happen on cameras they can figure out who did it based off your membership or payment details)

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I just stick my figer in it.
A stolen item is not noticed by customers. A vandalised product still in the store sows doubt in the customer about food safety.
Who knows what us fanatics might do to it?

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7 points

Stick your ear in it and leave an indentation in the hummus.

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4 points

I believe Walmart operates on the same principle.

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19 points

You’d have some shit hummus

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14 points
*

it just deducts from the deli manager’s inventory count. it was already bought by the warehouse and shipped based on a algorithm (with varying levels of manual control)

fun fact: most shrink (at least where im at) comes from the transfer of product between warehouse and store. warehouses love to short to make their own inventories (ths includes warehouses sending damaged, expired, and unwanted products)

also if i product is stolen enough it eventually just gets dropped forever and replaced with an alternative item

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I can’t say for certain, but I imagine this would, when accounting for scale, just cause the store to replenish its inventory as if the stock had been bought.

Edit: I guess if enough were being stolen they might stop selling it, but I think realistically the effect is just you are depleting their supply along with people buying it.

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Inventory accounting does factor in ‘shrink’, which is for stuff which gets stolen. To put it simply, when stuff gets stolen, it’s recorded as an expense and a decrease in inventory, simultaneously; that expense is reported with typical Cost of Goods sold, so it usually still reduces a company’s bottom line by the amount stolen.

What happens after that varies company to company, but usually there isn’t much they can do. It’s not like bad debt expense, where it (the bad debt) can be packaged and sold to some company that hopes to collect on some of the debt at a big discount, companies just have to eat the cost of shrink.

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16 points

If someone shoplifts something on the BDS list, does that still qualify as boycotting the brand?

Yes duh.

Is this a stupid question?

Also yes.

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13 points

not many people know this, but BDS stands for “Boycott, Divest, Shoplift”

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10 points

The point of BDS is to make it unprofitable for companies to partner with Israel. They don’t profit off of stolen goods, so stealing BDS items doesn’t go against the boycott.

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15 points

I’m pretty sure the grocery store in most cases takes the hit on the stolen item and they’d just buy more to replace it as if it were purchased. Of course if enough people steal it, the grocery store might not restock it. Costco is the notable exception; they don’t actually own the product in their store AFAIK

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7 points

Of course if enough people steal it, the grocery store might not restock it.

yep. seen this occur many times over my career

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4 points

They do though, losses are already assumed in the price, and unless rate of losses sufficiently change, they’ll buy at the same price (so campaign of stealing would deny value, individual act wouldn’t)

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9 points

Steal BDS items from Costco, not other grocery stores. Get your SodaStream and Coke and Sabra hummus from them

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