Walmart is rolling out digital shelf-label tools designed to help shoppers find products and store staff pick and replenish items more quickly.
The retailer’s Shop to Light feature allows customers to select a product in the Walmart app, receive directions to the relevant aisle and then flash the product’s digital label to identify it. Following a pilot, the service is being introduced more widely.
Two related tools, Pick to Light and Stock to Light, use the same technology to help employees locate items for online orders and restock shelves. All three features are expected to be available across Walmart’s stores by the holiday season, according to Greg Cathey, the company’s senior vice-president of digital transformation.
“We are people-led, tech-powered,” Mr Cathey said. He added that artificial intelligence and other technology should help employees do their jobs and give them more time to spend with customers and colleagues.
Shop to Light has recorded five million customer flashes since its introduction at a limited number of locations this summer. Walmart stores stock about 120,000 products, making it a priority for the company to improve how easily shoppers can locate individual items.
The new tools are being introduced as convenience and speed become increasingly important to Walmart’s delivery and collection operations. The retailer has continued to expand its e-commerce business, while investor concerns about comparable sales and its revenue outlook affected its shares after its most recent results in August.
Digital shelf labels expand across Walmart
Walmart has installed digital shelf labels in more than 4,300 stores and expects them to be in place throughout its chain by the end of the year. The labels allow prices to be changed across the business without replacing paper tags.
Prices are changed overnight, when customers are not in stores, and the system includes human oversight. Mr Cathey said about 90% of store sections currently have digital labels.
“We don’t look at it as technology for technology’s sake,” he said. “So we always have a human in the loop, and we’re very focused on human judgment and their ability to make decisions.”
The technology has nevertheless prompted concerns about dynamic pricing and the possibility that customer data could be used to set different prices. Walmart chief executive John Furner said in an open letter that the company would continue to “price the product, not the person”.
“Your income, shopping history, urgency or what we think you could pay won’t change the price,” he wrote.
Several US state legislatures, including New Jersey’s, have passed measures restricting digital shelf labels over pricing concerns. Walmart said the policy was an “overreaction”, describing the labels as a modern way to display prices rather than a surveillance-pricing tool.
The shelf-label programme forms part of a broader technology drive that includes an artificial intelligence shopping agent, automated supply-chain systems, radio-frequency identification tags and investment in modernising stores.
Mr Cathey said the new features were intended to give employees more time to respond to customers’ individual needs. “It’s not one or the other anymore. It’s both,” he said of physical retail and online fulfilment. “We don’t look at it as a store or an e-commerce fulfillment. They’re actually one and the same.”
