Walmart Rethinks Retail with AR and AI, Enhancing Customer Experiences and Employee Productivity

Walmart is making significant strides in incorporating augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence (AI) into its retail operations, showcasing innovative applications that enhance customer experiences and improve employee productivity.

AR-powered customer experiences: Walmart is leveraging AR to create immersive and interactive shopping experiences for customers:

• Virtual try-on features allow customers to see how outfits, beauty products, and optical frames look on them, with a choice of 150 models to represent different body types and appearances.
• The dynamic showroom and Shop With Friends applications enable customers to visualize furniture in their homes and share virtual try-on results with friends for feedback, making the shopping experience more engaging and social.
• Walmart reports improvements in conversion rates, reduced return rates, and increased add-to-cart rates when customers interact with these AR features.

Scaling AR experiences with AI: Walmart is utilizing AI to generate assets and scale its AR experiences effectively:

• The company’s core AR platform, Retina, empowers all Walmart businesses to create immersive experiences, with AI being used to generate assets for less complex geometries.
• Walmart employs generative AI techniques, procedural generation, and photogrammetry to create 3D assets, enabling the company to expand its AR offerings across various product categories.

Enhancing employee productivity: Walmart is exploring the use of AR and XR technologies to improve associate productivity and training:

• AR applications on smartphones, combined with spatial computing, help associates locate products in stores more efficiently, providing turn-by-turn navigation and reducing friction in the customer service process.
• The company is experimenting with head-mounted displays for future deployments, recognizing the potential for cost-effective solutions that can be scaled across its 2.1 million-strong global workforce.
• VR is already being used for training scenarios, such as active shooter simulations, allowing Walmart to cover multiple scenarios in a short time while saving costs.

Broader implications: Walmart’s AR journey highlights the transformative potential of these technologies in the retail industry:

• The company’s vision extends beyond bringing virtual environments to handheld devices, aiming to create truly immersive shopping experiences that merge the digital and physical worlds.
• Walmart’s partnerships with companies like Unity demonstrate the growing intersection between gaming, commerce, and AR, as customers increasingly engage with brands in virtual environments.
• The success of Walmart’s AR initiatives underscores the importance of investing in these technologies to meet evolving customer expectations and stay competitive in the retail landscape.

As Walmart continues to push the boundaries of AR and AI in retail, its experiences serve as a testament to the transformative power of these technologies in reshaping the way customers shop and employees work, setting the stage for a more immersive and efficient future of commerce.