How Walmart Is Hoping Its New Tech Will Help Shoppers And Employees

If you think about digital shelf labels, what we're doing here is trying to make things super easy for associates and the customer. And as you think about technology in general, that's what we're doing. These are Walmart's new digital shelf labels or DSLs. They're used in more than 4300 U.S. stores already, and expected to be chain-wide by the end of the year. With DSLs, employees update prices using a mobile app rather than using paper tags, which can otherwise take all day. Before we had digital tags, every single time that you would do like a modular that is new, you're going to have to use everything in paper. So we're going to have to look back and forth to see where it belongs. Other than helping staff with stocking and returns, they also speed up the time it takes the consumer to find an item. A Walmart store typically carries around 120,000 items. It's all about. Are we taking away a task that associates don't find value at? If you took the customer's position on that. They want to see the price. They want to. They want it clearly visible. And then if they're struggling, trying to find an item, they want to be able to get in and get out with speed. Dsls are a part of Walmart's recent focus on improving the in-store experience. Sales were lower than expected in its latest quarter. In fact, it was the company's smallest sales gain in more than six years. Analysts say it has less to do with Walmart and more to do with Americans' finances. Shoppers across the country are spending cautiously as the war in Iran and inflation continue to drive up prices. That's put pressure on Walmart's stock since May. But Walmart's new tech also comes as consumer anxiety over dynamic pricing is front and center. Shoppers worry the system will mimic rideshare apps or airlines' ability to increase prices based on demand. Though the company has pushed back, Walmart is going all in on technology right now. I'm at a store outside of New York to take a closer look at some of these new features. Walmart has been trying to enhance its customer experience for years, from delivery times and drone delivery to inside its stores since 2024. It's spent billions on modernizing hundreds of locations and building dozens of new ones. Its latest 20 stores have features like QR codes and DSLRs. The biggest priority that we had is how do we continue to accelerate from a speed standpoint? We have a Walmart store located within ten miles of 90% of the US population. And so our focus is how do we how do we get goods to the consumer faster than ever before? So we're in the pharmacy section. I'm looking for magnesium. Okay. So we'll hit magnesium. This first one looks great. It should tell us aisle G-9 and then we will say flash the price tag. There it is. And there it is. So this is the one you want. Cathey says the feature has been used 5 million times since its rollout this year. Staff has their own version called the Pick to Light feature. Their other tool is called Stock to Light, which shows which shelves are empty or low on inventory. How do these digital shelf labels fit into Walmart's broader technology strategy? What we're doing here is trying to make things super easy for associates and the customer. Walmart is also expanding its Radio Frequency identification, or RFID technology, which it's used for decades. These are smart chips that use radio waves to track products throughout the store and supply chain. Almost all of our items in apparel have electronic product codes in them. We would spend all of our time counting this to make sure we had the right amount of stock on the floor. Now you can use that RFID just to scan this, and you capture all of that data. For a retailer that's constantly managing price and inventory, these small changes could have a big impact and further set it apart from competitors, especially as inflation remains high and spendings slow. Analysts say Walmart is winning and retaining customers, in part because of its rollbacks, what it calls temporary price drops and deals. It more than doubled the markdowns in its most recent quarter. Now it'll have an easier time managing them at a time when consumers need them the most. Dynamic pricing, which is when businesses change prices in real time based on market demand, is controversial. States like Connecticut, Maryland and New Jersey have enacted laws that restrict the use of personal data to set individualized prices. This is a form of dynamic pricing called surveillance pricing. The FTC is considering a ban too. New Jersey went a step further in July, implementing a one year pause on any new electronic shelf labels while the state studies them. Walmart told CNBC in a statement that its DSL technology has already been installed in its New Jersey stores and that its labels are, quote, not a tool for surveillance pricing and are simply a modern way to display a price. Dsls operate on a closed system and do not interact with shoppers or collect any information about them. Walmart's price changes are mostly planned ahead of time and done overnight. There's a person, not a robot, making the pricing decisions, although the system is what implements them. Plus, some store managers will still be able to lower prices for customers in real time to remain competitive. Digital shelf labels have been around for a long time, so this is actually not new technology, but we designed it to display a price and to be able to identify and flash for a customer or associate. That's what we designed this technology to do and that's what the technology is doing.