Walmart Makes Holiday Shopping More Personalized With AI
This year, Walmart is leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI (GenAI) tools to make holiday shopping more efficient – from discovery, to purchase and delivery, and even returns.
Personalized Gift Ideas
Walmart.com is leveraging AI technologies to understand shoppers’ preferences, and GenAI to predict the type of content they’d like to see. Previously in the U.S., if customers searched for board games, they may be shown deals, new game releases or gift ideas. This year, the retail giant will use that same technology to create even more relevant and customized homepages for each shopper, according to a news release. In Mexico, a new GenAI-based personalization feature offers a broader range of personalized product recommendations for shoppers to consider purchasing this season.
Walmart is also using AI to identify and vet influencers, then share their content on the Walmart.com homepage for customers to discover this season’s hottest must-haves from popular creators.
Shopping Assistant & GenAI Search Tools
Walmart continues to expand the beta test of its GenAI-powered shopping assistant, which was designed to help shoppers discover and evaluate products for their unique needs. The tool engages in “natural, free-flowing conversations,” per the release.
The GenAI search experience on Walmart.com and in the Walmart app allows users to browse based on specific use cases (e.g., "What’s a good gift for a five-year-old boy?"). This generates more relevant and cross-category results, such as a sweater, book and soccer ball, giving customers gift ideas that may not come up through a traditional search function.
Additional tools such as GenAI-powered product reviews, product summarizations and product comparisons are also available. For example, with Walmart’s AI comparison feature, customers can compare different models when searching for a Smart TV.
New GenAI Tool
Walmart has upgraded its new GenAI-powered Customer Support Assistant to provide a more personalized and efficient experience. The assistant now recognizes customers from the start and goes beyond understanding their intent by taking actions such as finding orders and managing returns.
Sam’s Club’s Exit Technology
Sam’s Club has rolled out its exit technology to all locations. It combines AI and computer vision to scan items as members leave the club, automatically verifying their purchases. This technology was designed to significantly reduce wait times and provide a frictionless exit experience for members. In clubs where the technology has been deployed, Walmart said more than 64% of members are enjoying the exit experience, resulting in members leaving the club 21% faster.
Expanded Holiday Delivery with AI
Walmart is leveraging an AI-driven geospatial platform that it said will offer expanded delivery coverage to roughly 12 million additional U.S. households this year. This technology unifies Walmart’s transactions, network catchment, customer insights and external data into a geo-grid composed of data layers. These algorithms create unique delivery areas for each store based on factors like slot availability, drive time and store capacity, rather than traditional mileage-based delivery areas.
In Mexico, customers shopping at select Bodega Aurrera stores will experience a greater number of online grocery delivery windows for all items related to holiday party and cooking needs. The slot optimization data science model considers factors such as the number of available pickers and physical constraints within each store to determine the maximum number of orders that can be efficiently fulfilled daily.