I recently needed to buy a propane heater. Ordered it online for pickup at Walmart because there was only one left in stock.
Showed up at the Walmart thinking I could just pick it up right away. Turned into a huge big thing. The staff only goes around 1-2 times a day to fulfill these sorts of orders so I would have ended up waiting.
I ended up buying the last one on the shelf, which was mine anyway, and cancelling the online order. I wonder what would have happened if someone else bought it first.
I see this more as iterating on an idea to provide this service, and what I experienced, is the MVP.
WalMarts inventory system preemptively orders based on sell through rate, on-hand, and historical trends. Backroom stock is logged so a pick order can be fired when shelf count gets too low.
Source: worked in a few Walmart back rooms picking and binning among other things. The was about 8 years ago so things are likely a little bit different. Hopefully better since shelf max counts were always way off or we'd get flooded with freight and lose stuff in the bins.
I order for pickup all the time nowadays, at various retailers (Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Walgreens, Staples), and I have only had 1 time I can recall that one of the retailers reported they did not have the item I ordered. I must have picked up at least a 100x by now, and I feel like as long as I wait for the email that says it is ready for pickup, I am good to go.
I actually order online for pickup to ensure no one else buys it if there is only a few of the item in stock.
