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BENTONVILLE, Ark. – Walmart has unveiled its newest innovations to accelerate Adaptive Retail, the new era of retail defined by profoundly personal experiences that brings shopping to customers in exactly the ways they want and need.
The company has recently announced a Sam's Club all-digital store concept with no checkout lanes. Instead, customers will be able to ring up their items in the grocery aisles using a mobile app, Scan & Go. In place of checkout lanes, the Grapevine, Texas location will showcase online-only products with a corresponding QR code which lead to the item in the app.
Walmart has also announced a new Large Language Model (LLM), Wallaby, which is programmed with decades of Walmart data, enabling Walmart to combine it with other LLMs to create responses in a natural tone that are highly contextual and tailored to the Walmart environment. The company's AI-powered Customer Support Assistant has also been upgraded to recognize customers more immediately and can help with finding orders and managing returns.
The company has developed an AR platform called Retina to create more immersive shopping experiences, which leverages AI, GenAI and automation to create tens of thousands of 3D assets, along with Immersive Commerce APIs. After success as the first major retailer to pilot real-world commerce on Roblox and launch Walmart Realm, an immersive commerce destination, Walmart is using its Immersive Commerce APIs to enter alpha testing with Unity.
The company will also use its Immersive Commerce APIs to launch a new experience with ZEPETO later this year. Within the social platform, customers will be able to buy items from Walmart’s No Boundaries brand for their virtual avatars and the matching real-world item for themselves.
Retina also powers 10 AR experiences across Walmart U.S. and Sam’s Club that have seen a 10x increase in customer/member adoption, reduced rates of return and improved conversion rates. Looking ahead, Walmart plans to bring View in Your Home to Canada, Mexico and Chile via Retina and create more interactive experiences, like “hotspots,” an extension that enables customers/members to easily access production information while they are viewing an item in 3D. The company is also actively working on headset-based experiences to enable customers/members to visualize furniture in an inspirational setting.
