I admittedly don’t know that much about how retail works.
I was told (second hand knowledge) that everything in Walmart
is basically there on “consignment”, in that the supplier did not
get paid until the product was rang up at the cash register.
I doubt that’s true, but they probably have accounts set up with major vendors that are ‘30 days same as cash’ which would cut down on their cost of maintaining inventory.
If that is the case, then they changed their selling structure in the past 20 years. 20 years ago, I arranged with the company I worked for, a PC manufacturer, to sell machines to Walmart. They were negotiating a price that was 5% lower than our cost, so we walked way.
Now, some companies, like Apple, I bet do rent space since theycan control the quality of the sale from start to finish. But, if all products did that, you’d see frequent changes to the stock.