[symplee]

Exactly. Remember the days of Blockbuster, they'd have an entire shelf dedicated to 50 copies of a single movie.

Partly to handle actual demand, but, perhaps unlike the library, I imagine it was also partly to generate artificial demand by signaling: "Hey, you, undecided wanderer, look here, this is an important movie that everyone else is renting, you should too."

[topkai22]

I remember reading/hearing that blockbuster did that as their competitive advantage over other video stores- they’d build customer loyalty by definitely having the latest thing in stock, even if it was a loss leader.