The holiday season is a time of joy and celebration, but it often comes with the stress of finding the perfect gifts. Navigating crowds, securing this season’s must-have items and tracking the best deals – all while making sure the holiday fun arrives on time – can be overwhelming and time-consuming.
This year, Walmart is transforming holiday shopping through the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI (GenAI) tools, making the experience faster and more convenient – from discovery, to purchase and delivery, and even returns.
Personalized gift ideas with Walmart's advanced AI technology
On Walmart.com, AI is powering a highly personalized holiday shopping experience. When customers visit the site, AI technologies understand their preferences, and GenAI predicts the type of content they’d like to see. In the U.S., if a customer previously searched for board games, they may be shown deals, new game releases or gift ideas. In the coming year, the company will use this same technology to create even more relevant and customized homepages for each shopper. Internationally, a new GenAI-based personalization feature offers a broader range of personalized product recommendations for customers to consider purchasing this holiday season in Mexico.
Walmart is also using AI to identify and vet influencers, then share their content on the Walmart.com homepage for customers to discover this season’s hottest must-haves from their favorite creators.
A shopping assistant and suite of GenAI search tools to help customers discover the perfect gift
The company continues to expand the beta test of its GenAI-powered shopping assistant, which enables customers to discover, evaluate and decide on the best product for their unique needs. Just like a real-life shopping assistant, the tool engages in natural, free-flowing conversations, ensuring customers feel confident in their purchases.
The GenAI search experience on Walmart.com and in the Walmart app allows customers to browse based on specific use cases (e.g., "What’s a good gift for a five-year-old boy?"). This generates more relevant and cross-category results, such as a sweater, book and soccer ball, giving customers gift ideas they may not have discovered if using a traditional search function.
Additional tools such as GenAI-powered product reviews, product summarizations and product comparisons are also available to enhance the shopping experience. For example, with Walmart’s AI-driven comparison feature, customers can compare different models when searching for a Smart TV, streamlining their decision-making process.
Breeze through holiday checkout with Sam’s Club AI-powered exit technology
Sam’s Club has rolled out its exit technology to all locations, which combines AI and computer vision to scan items as members leave the club, automatically verifying their purchases. This application has revolutionized the checkout process and represents the largest-scale implementation of consumer-facing AI-powered technology in the retail industry. This technology significantly reduces wait times and provides a friction-free exit experience for Sam’s Club members which will enable an even smoother shopping experience during the holiday season. In clubs where the technology has been deployed, more than 64% of members are enjoying the friction-free exit experience, resulting in members leaving the club 21% faster.
Expanded holiday delivery with AI-driven technology
Roughly 12 million additional U.S. households will benefit from expanded delivery coverage this year, thanks to an AI-driven geospatial platform. This technology unifies Walmart’s transactions, network catchment, customer insights and external data into a unique geo-grid composed of data layers. These algorithms create unique delivery areas for each store based on factors like slot availability, drive time and store capacity, rather than traditional mileage-based delivery areas.
In Mexico, customers shopping at select Bodega Aurrera stores will experience a greater number of online grocery delivery windows for all items useful for holiday party and cooking needs. The slot optimization data science model considers factors such as the number of available pickers and physical constraints within each store to determine the maximum number of orders that can be efficiently fulfilled daily.
Smoother shopping solutions with new GenAI tool
Walmart's new GenAI-powered Customer Support Assistant has been upgraded to provide a more personalized and efficient experience. The assistant now recognizes customers from the start and goes beyond understanding their intent by taking actions such as finding orders and managing returns. This enhancement ensures a smoother, quicker and more effective support experience.
Walmart's integration of AI and GenAI across various platforms is transforming the holiday shopping experience, making it easier, quicker and more personalized. This holiday season, spend less time searching and more time with loved ones, thanks to the innovative AI-driven tools at Walmart.
