You may have heard of omnichannel retail or experiential retail. But one of the world’s biggest retailers, Arkansas-based Walmart, is now working to popularize the concept of “adaptive retail.”
The company defines adaptive retail as “an evolved form of retail that brings shopping to the customer in exactly the way they want and need,” meaning it’s highly dependent on data and technology to better understand the shopping journey from start to finish.
They’re particularly focused on technology that blurs the line between online and in-person shopping, helping consumers get the best of both worlds no matter how they choose to check out, according to Anupriya Sharma, VP of Walmart US Tech Strategy.
We spoke with Sharma recently about Walmart’s adaptive retail efforts, which include innovations in generative AI, augmented reality, virtual reality, hyper-personalization, and more.
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Something I wanted to delve into is this concept of adaptive retail. I know Walmart defines it as going “beyond blending the best of online and offline to adapting experiences based on an understanding of the deeper context behind the purchase.” I’d love it if you could give me some examples of how Walmart practically embodies this in its latest technological endeavors, whether it’s through AI or other means, particularly for consumers using in-person and dot-com shopping.
Adaptive retail is looking at how intimately and profoundly we can go personal and, in that, defining the how, where, when and why they are looking for certain products or even experiences. That’s why there’s a profound role that technology and data plays. Of course, there’s a lot of conversation around generative AI, and how do we use that to make experiences for our customers impactful? But like you said, there’s a broad use of technology that is, in addition to Gen AI, using technology such as virtual reality, augmented reality, machine learning and many other aspects of technology that enable us to create those customer experiences.
We’re really indexing a lot on the search experience and using generative AI to make it quite tailored to the kind of shopping trip the customer is on. We use Walmart gen AI search experience on Walmart.com as well as in our app, which allows customers to browse on very specific needs. If you’re saying, “Hey, I want to look for a good gift for a six-year-old girl,” then the search results should really be for a six-year-old girl. Relevancy, right? Machine learning is further personalizing it based on what I know about this individual’s shopping preferences.
Opening up the app or opening up our browser experience, we’re also using Gen AI to understand the customers and start predicting the content that they would like to see on Walmart.com. If it’s me versus my 13-year-old son, there’ll be a very different assortment of products, and I don’t want to skim through his to get to mine, and vice versa.
There’s this sense of immediacy and personalization like never before, and the combined power of technology and data is what then allows us to leverage generative AI across a modern supply chain, which will orchestrate how different products are going to move all the way from farm to home, or manufacturer to store. Generative AI allows us to know how much to buy, where to position it, how to move it, so that I can keep the essentials and inventory in stock.
You mentioned going “intimately and profoundly” personal. In this context, is there such a thing as too personal?
Yes, there is. As a company, we really protect the trust that customers put in us, so we use the data that we have to create hyper-personalized experiences in that construct of, we are using information that is available to us that the customer is aware of, and then we can use that information that the customer is trusting us with to create experiences. There’s a little bit of that guardrail of what we want to present.
I want to take this analogy to the stores as well. A store selling a certain assortment of goods in Arkansas is going to look a little different from the store selling an assortment in Florida versus Arizona.
When we talk about shaping personalization experiences on our dot-com, we follow the same guiding principles of, how are we using the data that we have access to, pursuant to all our Walmart privacy policies, but yet creating experiences that make it convenient for our customers to come and shop with us?
Last year’s inaugural “State of Adaptive Retail” report from Walmart had some interesting notes about blending the best of in-person and online shopping experiences. For example, 41 percent of online shoppers want a way to preview or try the products before buying. Meanwhile, 45 percent of in-person shoppers want no checkout lines. Can you share some practical ways Walmart is evolving retail to account for these types of seemingly juxtaposed preferences?
Over the past few years, we’ve launched multiple US-based augmented reality initiatives, things like virtual try-on experiences across apparel, beauty, optical and more, like View In Your Home furniture-related experiences. We’re continuing to make a lot of, I would say, bolder strides, because we do want to have the ambition of positioning Walmart as a destination for fashion and apparel.
More recently, we have Shop with Friends where you could try something on, take a picture and share it with your friends, so they could vote. There’s an option to Choose My Model or Be Your Own Model. You could choose your body type or scan your own image, and then you’re looking at how a certain dress would look on your body type, or a model that you feel comfortable is your body type. All of these things are really enabling and closing the gap between the digital and the physical. It’s less blending, but going from one to the other, and mirroring the experiences on both.
We also have Walmart+ members that can use the option of mobile scan and go as they come into the store. That is allowing them to use their phone to scan their items as they’re shopping before they pay off their purchased items in a self checkout lane.
On the business side of things, take me through the process of developing some of these retail tech advancements you’re talking about. Who is sparking these ideas? How are they being tested and proven before launch, and maybe iteratively improved over time?
Our people really are our source for innovative ideas. We take a lot of the feedback that we get from our associates and our customers throughout the process. We work in the construct of four-in-the-box teams, where we have a business leader that’s thinking, “We need to go to the market with this, all informed by customer insight.” We have technology, we have product, but we also have design. Design is truly fixated on: Who is the user here? What is the problem? And making and ensuring that we’re stepping into the shoes of the user before we even get to the actual tech solve.
The way we work inside Walmart is that we’re constantly collaborating across many cross-functional teams, and we’re exploring use cases and advancements. We want to experiment, and these tests allow us to take them across different stores, sometimes in specific items or home pages or search experiences, and then gather that feedback. That feedback allows us to refine what we are working on, our hypotheses, and then allows us to go forward with a more vital rollout.
The idea for my next question came from watching “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that show, but there was a time when personalized shopping referred to hitting up a B. Altman, where the employees knew your style because you actually went there a lot. Today, it’s obviously very different, and from what you’re talking about, it seems like the lines between in-person and online shopping are blurring. How are we redefining “personalized shopping” from our current generation of shopping to the next?
I have seen the show, actually. Huge fan. Even if I look at my own childhood as an example, I remember that my mom had these favorite two or three sets of stores where we would go. She knew what the assortment was. But look at the themes that have stayed evergreen: assortment, price, experience. Thematically, that has been the guiding principle for Walmart as a business. We cannot operate anymore in a world where we have to remember what this customer wants. The customer is also living in a world where they have a lot of global exposure, and they may suddenly find something from an Instagram and Tiktok that they wouldn’t have in a traditional setup ever asked for. But how do we meet them when they do that?
With this technology, our hope and ambition here at Walmart is to create a unique home page for each shopper, expected to launch, hopefully, by the end of this fiscal year.
Today, Walmart has adopted several different personalization strategies that are a combination of data and technology. As an example, we have a content decision platform that leverages AI-based technology to understand the customer, and then a Gen AI-powered tool that allows us to predict the type of content they would like to see on the site. It’s already being used across several select areas of the Walmart e-commerce site. With this technology, our hope and ambition here at Walmart is to create a unique home page for each shopper, expected to launch, hopefully, by the end of this fiscal year.
I’ll give you my own personal experience too. In the past,if I’m browsing Facebook and a pop up ad comes up that’s showing me some nice products from Walmart or any website, I would click and it would take me to Walmart.com. Now I have to go and find that product. It’s very painful, because convenience is key. Recently, I saw this bookshelf, and it was amazing, very mid-century boho. I didn’t know it was Walmart, and this influencer was talking and I just click on it, and it takes me to the product on our app. That whole transaction was completed in less than five minutes. That’s hyper-personalization without being creepy.
Despite all the advancements that we’ve talked about today, I would argue that we haven’t achieved some sort of retail utopia. Looking at the broader retail industry, where are there still gaps in achieving truly adaptive retail and do you see the industry being able to close these gaps with the technology we currently have?
We’re living in a world of evolving experiences. Any technology that was launched usually takes about two decades worth of time for it to become a norm, whether it’s economically accessible, viable, or just so easy to use.
We’re living in a world of evolving experiences. Any technology that was launched usually takes about two decades worth of time for it to become a norm, whether it’s economically accessible, viable, or just so easy to use. It’s very hard to say there’s going to come a time where we would have achieved utopia. I think it will constantly get redefined. That’s the beauty of retail. The whole concept is to not just meet the customer where they’re at right now, but it’s that anticipation.
There was a lot of buzz a few years ago about the metaverse. Guess what? The buzz went away, but the work is still continuing, and Walmart actually has a very active participation in that space that allows you to purchase without leaving your game.
If we step out of Walmart for a moment and look at the world, you will see that in shopping behaviors, there’s a maturity curve, and some shoppers are already saying, “I want something and I want it in five minutes,” versus some shoppers who are living in a different world. We have to constantly evaluate where we are, be humble and understand that we’re just beginning to scratch the surface. The next step is to make sure that everything that we’ve built continues to adapt in all different evolving contexts of customers, and that we stay close to the humans in the picture.
