Earlier this year, Walmart chief technologist Suresh Kumar argued that the 62-year-old retailer is in the process of transforming the industry through a framework his company dubbed “Adaptive Retail.”
“Everything great about eCommerce – no lines, easy search and find, personalized recommendations – must be available in the store,” he wrote. “And everything great about the store – try on, customer service, instant purchase – needs to be available from home.”
Now Kumar – who previously worked a combined 20 years for Amazon, Google and Microsoft – and fellow Walmart leaders have the research that they believe backs up their vision.
Walmart recently underwrote a survey, conducted by Morning Consult, of more than 2,200 Americans about their shopping habits and preferences that shows strong interest in shopping via social media apps and with the help of virtual assistants, as well as in-store shopping experiences that increase convenience through technologies such as mobile checkout and augmented reality.
Among the most notable findings:
- The long-touted impact of social media on shopping habits might be here, with 55 percent of Gen Z respondents saying they’ve shopped while browsing social media in the six months leading up to their response.
Additionally, almost as many Gen Z respondents now begin their product searches on social media as do on search engines or on a retailer’s own app or website.
- More than half of shoppers said they’d like product recommendations tailored, or personalized, to either their body type or the space they live in.
- Half of Gen Z shoppers, as well as those who are parents, want a virtual shopping assistant at all times.
- Nearly 8 in 10 of all respondents have shopped online while focused on another task in the six months preceding the survey
- Half of respondents were interested in phone-based self-checkout in stores, while 60 percent of parents and more than half of Gen Z respondents would like to buy products in a store but have it delivered to their homes for them.
Not surprisingly, the questions that elicited such responses were grounded in part in new technologies and services that Walmart has tested and introduced in recent years. Earlier this year, for example, Walmart began testing and touting an AI-powered virtual assistant aimed at guiding shoppers on the right purchases when they are planning a party or purchasing a gift but aren’t set on an exact product or products to purchase. The company has also invested in technologies that allow online shoppers to virtually try on merchandise from home, and services that will deliver goods directly into a customer’s house, and even their fridge.
“The home is just another node in our supply chain,” Walmart’s Kumar, the chief technology officer, told Fortune in a recent interview.
When it comes to social media, Walmart has employed a network of influencers to help sell goods to shoppers as close to the point of discovery or inspiration on external video and photo-sharing apps as possible. TikTok, perhaps unsurprisingly, has been one platform where Walmart has invested heavily.
“This notion of shopping used to start with stores, and then it was online,” Kumar said. “And now it is kind of permeating everything.”
He added that a critical component supporting this overall transformation is machine learning technologies and other forms of artificial intelligence working behind the scenes to “orchestrate the movement of all of the merchandise from manufacturing all the way to people’s homes,” so the right goods can be available whether a customer wants to have them shipped from a warehouse, delivered from a store, or available on a store’s shelf or for curbside pickup.
“This is very, very important,” he said of the behind-the-scenes system. “It also ties into some of the things that you find in the report which is immediacy, speed, instant gratification, especially with Gen Z, including my own daughters. These things matter a lot.”
Walmart has for years been chasing Amazon to provide online shoppers as much selection as possible, but recognizes that many shoppers, including younger generations, want that selection tailored to them in some instances. Kumar argued that Walmart’s massive reach in both in-store and online sales, as well as other services it provides from pharmacies to auto centers, provides it the data to know its customers perhaps better than any other retailer.
“When you combine that with the power of ML and AI, and all the custom models that we are able to build on top of it, that is a huge…transformation,” he said.
The key, of course, is turning those reams of data into recommendations that are both timely and relevant but not creepy.
“I think five years from now, maximum 10 years from now, you will look back and you will see that the way in which people find and discover products, how they express their identity and transact, and how they get their products and services,” Kumar concluded, “is fundamentally going to change.”
Are you a current or former Walmart employee with thoughts on this topic or a tip to share? Contact Jason Del Rey at jason.delrey@fortune.com, jasondelrey@protonmail.com, or through secure messaging app Signal at 917-655-4267. You can also message him on LinkedIn or at @delrey on X.
