They test the waters every-so-often to see if they can change the retail ecosystem to benefit them. Unfortunately, this is the kind of idea that may work on some scale. They may ask for some kind of personal data that shows you are a loyal customer and use it for launch since the company won't be managing inventory and would only be making sales. Growth of this program/system would be gradual. Think of it as the rise of our favoritest thing ever, social credit systems.