Walmart shelf labels will light up to guide shoppers, CNBC reports
Walmart is turning its digital shelf labels into a way to find things. Shoppers can now make the label under a product flash from the Walmart app, as Laya Neelakandan reported for CNBC. The feature, called Shop to Light, is moving from a pilot to a wide rollout. Customers have already used it to flash […] This story continues at The Next Web
Walmart is turning its digital shelf labels into a way to find things. Shoppers can now make the label under a product flash from the Walmart app, as Laya Neelakandan reported for CNBC .
The feature, called Shop to Light, is moving from a pilot to a wide rollout. Customers have already used it to flash labels 5 million times since it reached a few stores this summer, CNBC reported.
Staff get two matching tools. Pick to Light helps them find items for online orders, and Stock to Light shows them where new stock goes. All three will reach every store by the holiday season, said Greg Cathey, Walmart’s senior vice president of digital transformation.
“This is a use case that customers have asked us for, associates have asked us for,” Cathey told CNBC. “It gives them time back.”
The tools use a light already built into each label, Walmart said . It added that the system collects no customer data and has no cameras or microphones.
A Walmart store carries about 120,000 items, so finding one jar of sauce is not always easy. More than 4,300 stores now have the labels, and Walmart expects every store to have them by the end of the year.
The labels were brought in so prices could change across the chain at once. That has fed fears of prices that shift by the hour, or by shopper.
Last week, chief executive John Furner ruled out personalised pricing in an open letter.
“Your income, shopping history, urgency or what we think you could pay won’t change the price,” he wrote.
Cathey said prices change overnight, when stores are empty, and a person checks the system.
New Jersey has still frozen new digital labels for a year. Walmart says all its stores there already have them.
“Digital shelf labels are not a tool for surveillance pricing and are simply a modern way to display prices,” Walmart said, calling the law an overreaction.
The push fits Walmart’s wider bet on AI, as more Americans use AI to shop .
“It’s not one or the other anymore. It’s both,” Cathey said of stores and online sales.
