Final answer:
Businesses like Walmart that sell a mixture of durable and nondurable goods often maintain a single type of inventory account due to the broad and uniform nature of their products. Inventory levels are adjusted based on consumer demand, and large-scale operations can benefit from such a system.
Step-by-step explanation:
The student asked about businesses that only need to keep one type of inventory account. Retail giants like Walmart often only maintain one generalized inventory account due to the homogeneous nature of their products which typically consist of a mix of durable goods and nondurable goods. Inventories represent the goods a business has produced or purchased but not yet sold, stored in warehouses or on shelves. The inventory levels fluctuate based on consumer demand; they may decrease if sales are better than anticipated, or increase if sales are disappointing.
For businesses like Walmart, which sell a wide variety of products, the streamlined approach of a single inventory account can be beneficial. This is because they operate on a large scale with predictable, calculable, and uniform products. Conversely, a company like Amazon, which has a significantly different business model, holds its inventory in numerous warehouses but still benefits from economies of scale and a potentially single, centralized inventory system due to its online nature and strategically located warehouses in low-rent areas.