Do you honestly believe that Wal Mart buys only for immediate delivery and never secures orders for future delivery?
They have thousands of large storage and distribution warehouse and a highway of ships coming and going to china, but they still have it on their shelves when they sell it. Unless you special order it from the warehouse a few miles away. Which still belongs to them and they have physical control of when they sell it. Hell they even have real insurable interest.
For a while {a few years} it was doing just that. They changed from a long time in-store on hand stockroom inventory policy to an On Time to store inventory system. The immediate result was products were being discontinued and their on hand inventory was greatly affected as well. Customers went elsewhere.
Only in the past month did corporation finally acknowledge their serious mistake or should we just call it Walmart rediscovers the old Walmart? Wal-Mart outlines new strategy