Walmart adds AI tools to help suppliers understand customer data better

Walmart is developing new AI-powered features for Scintilla, its first-party data platform that provides suppliers and merchants with customer insights and shopping behavior data. The tools, announced at Walmart’s Inspire conference in Arkansas, are designed to help suppliers better understand and act on customer data rather than relying solely on traditional operational metrics.

What you should know: The AI features include three main tools launching between now and early next year to make customer data more accessible to suppliers.

• A conversational AI tool will help users understand what specific metrics mean, how they’re calculated, and how to apply them to business decisions.
• AI-generated research summaries will automatically analyze customer survey results from Walmart’s Customer Spark Community, an invitation-only program that offers customers gift cards for participating in surveys.
• Enhanced marketing recommendations will use AI to identify changes in customer shopping behaviors and suggest targeted strategies.

Why this matters: Walmart is shifting suppliers away from decades-old practices of using only operational data for inventory and placement decisions toward customer-centric insights.

• “We need to always start with a customer, not start with our sales and operational metrics,” said Mark Hardy, head of Walmart Data Ventures.
• The move positions Walmart to compete more effectively in retail media, especially as it expands into connected TV advertising through its Vizio acquisition.

How the conversational tool works: Available early next year, the AI assistant will help suppliers navigate Scintilla’s complex data sets covering sales, category performance, customer penetration, and web traffic.

• Hardy expects this to be most valuable for customer-related metrics that suppliers aren’t familiar with.
• “This is helping users become more sophisticated themselves, in terms of the application of the data to the business decisions they have to make,” Hardy explained.

The research automation angle: AI-generated survey summaries will be available by the end of this year, cutting down analysis time for brands using Walmart’s customer research.

• Currently, either Walmart researchers or suppliers themselves must manually analyze survey data from the Customer Spark Community.
• The AI will generate conclusions and inferences immediately after studies conclude, letting suppliers “spend more time thinking about their strategies instead of creating graphs and charts on their own,” Hardy said.

Marketing intelligence upgrade: Walmart plans to incorporate AI into Insights Activation, which uses Scintilla data for targeted advertising campaigns through Walmart Connect.

• The system will continuously monitor customer shopping behaviors and recommend marketing strategies based on behavioral changes.
• Custom targeting can extend beyond product categories—for example, targeting health-conscious shoppers who buy natural or gluten-free foods with relevant health and beauty products.

What experts think: The AI integration reflects broader trends in retail media toward democratizing data access through natural language tools.

• “The primary benefit of that is just the ability to democratize access to a data tool,” said Andrew Lipsman of Media, Ads + Commerce, a retail media analyst and consultant.
• “Oftentimes within organizations, it’s constrained to a few individual people, and there’s so much value to be derived from data.”