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Walmart continues to be an early and avid adopter of AR to enliven shopping experiences. It has already launched several initiatives for immersive shopping, such as its recent Showroom feature. And on the VR front, it’s one of the early exemplars of immersive employee training.
Such efforts were recently crystalized in a more formal program that federates several disparate AR pieces. Known as Adaptive Retail, it includes both AR and AI components. The goal according to Walmart is “hyper-personalized, convenient, and engaging shopping experiences.”
Adaptive Retail mostly applies to eCommerce but also has potential integrations in physical stores. And it applies across Walmart digital properties, as well as Sam’s Club and partners’ domains. The latter includes games and 3D experiences where its products can appear through an API.
Specifically, Walmart is alpha testing an API in collaboration with Unity, which lets developers bring Walmart products into their games & 3D experiences. This could unlock affiliate revenue opportunities for developers, sort of like how Fortnite and Roblox monetize brand integrations.
Streamline & Scale
Drilling down on the AR integrations teased above, a new 3D shopping engine called Retina will give online shoppers better dimensional understanding of products via AR try-ons. Built on 3D models of tens of thousands of products, the goal is to let shoppers try before they buy.
One feature that flows from this is View in Your Home. Using the smartphone camera, shoppers can envision how products look in their spaces by dimensionally placing 3D models. This is useful for home decor among other things, especially bulky items with space considerations.
The resulting shopper confidence has been known to boost conversion rates and basket sizes, which is where Walmart’s ROI lies. And because customers get a better sense of items, it can reduce return rates – otherwise an expensive problem for large-scale retailers like Walmart.
But Retina is just the beginning. Based on Walmart’s operational scale, AR will need to apply to millions of individual products if it’s to have a real impact. And to get to that point requires a platform that can help Walmart streamline the 3D modeling process at massive scale.
Transcending Buzzwords
Moving on to the AI elements, Adaptive Retail will integrate Walmart’s generative AI platform, Wallaby. As a large language model, it’s trained on Walmart’s extensive product and shopping data to answer a wide range of customer questions about products or support functions.
For example, Wallaby will have digital assistant capabilities to do things like process product returns in a streamlined way. This not only replaces manual headaches for shoppers but brings some operational efficiencies to Walmart, such as automating customer service.
Another place AI factors in is a predictive engine for personalized shopping. Known as the Content Decision Platform, it predicts future outcomes based on past behavior (which is the definition of AI). This will enable outcomes like personalized shopper home pages on Walmart.com.
The theme in all these AI integrations is to save time for shoppers, and to enable operational efficiencies (read: cost savings) for Walmart. Though AI is surrounded by hype and vapor, these types of tangible benefits are where the technology will sustain and transcend buzzwords.
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