Probably a corporate central office monitors sales and makes all (or nearly all) decisions about what items will be stocked at what stores, stocking levels, etc. Often the central office also specifies aisle and shelf location. This is becoming increasingly common, as it both improves profitability and cuts costs. Wally World is the premier example (full sales and inventory monitoring and analysis in near real time for all stores), but lots of other chains use similar techniques. It looks like H.E.B. does this, or something very similar, though their ability and willingness to handle special orders is much better (so far, anyway) than most companies using this sort of sales/inventory control.cxm wrote:... he said they do not order merchandise... and can only sell what is sent to them... sounds pretty odd to me ....
That's the future with chains, like it or not. It's the only way they'll be able to remain competitive against the network retailers.