How Walmart's mobile-led strategy drives a seamless shopper experience

Geoffrey Precourt

Event Reports

ad:tech San Francisco, May 2013

 

 

How Walmart's mobile-led strategy drives a seamless shopper experience

Geoffrey Precourt

Warc

Also see Walmart.com in 2016: How imagination created a holistic customer experience, another report on Walmart from

ad:tech San Francisco.

A key component of Walmart's strategy, according to Wendy Bergh, its senior director/mobile and digital strategy in the

retailer's global ecommerce group, is delivering seamless access to customers across channels.

"Our customers don't tell their friends, 'Hey, I shopped at a Walmart store today' or 'I shopped at Walmart.com today. They talk

about 'shopping with Walmart'. So when we serve them with different channels, we need to make sure they're getting a very

holistic experience," she told an audience at the 2013 ad:tech San Francisco conference.

Appearing on a "Moving on Mobile" panel discussion, Bergh shared pieces of a three-part Walmart interactive merchandising

program that focused on hand-held devices and "delivered as great customer experiences."

Its three phases focused on: mobilising .com (i.e. Walmart's digital experience), mobilising stores (offering in-store mobile

tools) and accelerating multi-channel opportunities.

Mobilising .com

This initial stage was about delivering an "optimised version" of a Walmart digital experience available to consumers at home

or in store – "anytime, anyplace," said Bergh.

The foundational piece "really is just giving customers the opportunity to shop with us through their smartphones and tablets."

Describing it as "a necessary part of anyone's retail strategy," Bergh explained "it's table stakes. It's what customers expect

nowadays. If you don't have it, you're not serving them well."

Mobilising stores

   Title: How Walmart's mobile-led strategy drives a seamless shopper experience

   Author(s): Geoffrey Precourt

   Source: Event Reports

   Issue: ad:tech San Francisco, May 2013

 

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Stage two is a critical "point of differentiation" shared by Walmart's 4,000 U.S. retail stores: create "indispensable in-store

shopping tools – shopping lists, aisle-to-aisle guidance in the large-box shopping environment, and alerts to special deals that

align with past shopper interests, barcode scanning, check-out assistance, eReceipts, and interactive local digital advertising."

The "mobilising" effort, Bergh explained to the ad:tech audience, "is all about giving shoppers the ability to help themselves –

tools that will help them save more time and more money in the stores and make it a more convenient experience."

Accelerating multi-channel opportunities

Stages 1 and 2, Bergh explained, "naturally leads" to the third phase: a customer-focused effort that is aimed at delivering a

seamless experience across iPads, iPhones, Android apps, on the Internet and through SMS texting.

"The biggest focus for us really is in mobilising stores," Bergh continued. Walmart's aggressive pursuit of the mobile-focused

customer has strong financial underpinnings, as Bergh cited a Deloitte "The Dawn of the Mobile Influence" story that revealed

that mobile customers used their hand-held devices to influence $158 billion in 2012 retail expenditures (about 5% of total in-

store retail) – an impressive figure that's anticipated to grow to $689 billion – or 20% of in-store retail – by the end of 2016.

"It's a huge opportunity for us, with more than 140 million people walking into our [U.S.] stores every week – 200 million

globally. We want to make sure those customers have a great experience…. And mobile is a way to enhance that experience

within the stores."

To that end, "We've really looked at how the customer shops with us," Bergh told the San Francisco ad:tech assembly, a

process that has spanned their pre-planning of shopping, their arrival at the store and their check out experience.

Pre-Planning

Bergh revealed that 90% of shoppers create shopping lists before they get to a Walmart store, so the company's goal is to

make that a "more seamless, easier, digital experience." For the retailer, shopping lists are not just a random list of items.

They're also a customer's budgeting tool that shapes the in-store shopping experience in the comfort of an at-home

environment.

With a Walmart shopping-list app, not only can customers record a want list, but they can see the price at their local store, the

 

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quantity in stock and its aisle location. "It helps them manage their budget before they go to the store and tell them where to go

once they get to the store.

Welcome

When a shopper arrives at a Walmart location and has a Welcome app open, they are asked if they want to enter 'Store

Mode'. This provides them with a set of digital tools that includes interactive online advertising about what's on special offer

that week, a QR code scanner and a bar-code scanner for price and product information, as well as access to the shopping

lists they created at home.

Check Out

The last stage of the Walmart mobile expedition ends at the check out. The retailer has a Scan & Go program currently in a

200-store test in 14 regions that allows shoppers to scan items as they shop and simply transfer baskets at check-out. "More

than 50% of the customers who have used it have come back and used it again," said Bergh.

The company is also testing consumer response to providing e-Receipts in a secure locker, an offering that would take the

paper stream out of the last step in shopping.

While Walmart doesn't need interactive-industry accolades as evidence of its force as a retail innovator, Bergh revealed that it

used a number of ways to improve and measure levels of customer engagement.

Since 2011, Walmart has worked to make its apps work faster and improve the shopper's in-store experiences, to give them

"access to the brands they loved," as Bergh put it, even as it facilitated access to local stores.

"We re-platformed all of our [mobile] experiences," said Bergh, and by the end of 2012 in the U.S., Mobile Commerce Daily

awarded it both the "Mobile App of the Year" and "Mobile Retailer of the Year" honors. Equally, in the U.K., it walked home

with the Mumsnet "Best" award and was rated the top retail app in the Apple App Store.

To drive the mobile success, Bergh added, "We had to make sure that different teams across the organisation were aligned on

goals. The mobile team played a huge part in that." But the organisation's "Anywhere, Anytime" philosophy demanded new

expertise – skill sets that the company developed within its organisation.

That capability enabled full integration into Walmart's existing online groups, its various store organisations, and its human-

resource groups. "For instance", said Bergh, "when we launched Scan & Go, there was a huge amount of training involved in

that [effort]… [and] in marketing, we had to make sure that our customers understood these new tools that we were offering

 

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and have access to them."

An implicit advantage of Walmart's innovation in these areas is its global scalability. Said Bergh: "As we go to more banners

around the world, we don't have to start from scratch."

And, indeed, even though the new Walmart mobile strategy is designed to work in the Americas, its development is being

targeted for expansion to Western Europe and Japan.

About the author

Geoffrey Precourt is the US Editor of Warc.

You can read all his papers and reports from recent marketing events at www.warc.com/precourt.

 

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