Walmart bets on inventory software ahead of tough holiday shopping season

With 10 weeks to go before the kickoff of the critical holiday shopping season, retail executives are preoccupied with how much and what merchandise to stock to meet demand from choosy shoppers who may be financially strapped.

The merchandise mix Walmart will carry rests not purely on retail executives’ judgment but rather on software it developed around 2019. Its machine-learning algorithm relies on weather patterns and each store’s past sales data to predict inventory needs of its more than 4,700 U.S. locations, a Walmart tech executive told Reuters.