Walmart digital shelf labels add product-finding tools

Walmart is aiming to make it as easy as possible for its customers to find exactly what they want.

The retailer is leveraging three new tools tied to its digital shelf labels for both customers and store associates to better find products. It’s the latest part of the company’s push to modernize its technology and incorporate artificial intelligence into its business.

“We are people-led, tech-powered,” said Greg Cathey, Walmart’s senior vice president of digital transformation. “But the way we look at it is AI as a way to help associates do their job and free up time to allow them to invest in what they love to do most, which is spend more time with customers and their fellow associates.”

The new feature for shoppers, called Shop to Light, allows customers to find specific products on the Walmart app, navigate to the correct aisle in the store and then flash the digital shelf label of the product to locate it. The retailer is now incorporating it widely following a pilot program.

That tool is also paired with Pick to Light and Stock to Light, which use the same capabilities to help store associates pick items for digital orders and stock products. All three features will be rolled out to stores companywide by the holiday season, Cathey said.

“This is a use case that customers have asked us for, associates have asked us for,” Cathey said. “It gives them time back, and I think if you look at a lot of what we’re trying to do, it’s all around convenience and being able to help associates and customers free up that time to invest it where they want.”

The rollout comes as convenience and speed — particularly in the delivery and pickup segments — have become critical pieces of Walmart’s efforts to increase sales. While Walmart’s business has grown steadily, and its e-commerce sales continue to soar, investor concerns about its comparable sales and revenue outlook weighed on its stock after its most recent earnings report in August.

Walmart stores carry roughly 120,000 items. Cathey said it’s a priority for the company to provide that large range of products while making it easier for customers to locate precise items.

While the company does not publicly share any financial aspects of the program, Cathey said the new features at pilot stores allow associates and customers to have more time while shopping and stocking. The Shop to Light feature has already seen 5 million flashes from customers since it began rolling out to limited locations this summer.

He said these new features will be especially important as the retailer heads into the busy holiday season, and the company views them as “a big win” for time savings.

Walmart began using digital shelf labels, as opposed to paper labels, to allow automatic and systemwide price changes to be rolled out at once. The company currently has more than 4,300 stores with digital shelf labels, and expects them to be installed across the chain by the end of the year, according to Walmart.

He added that the label prices are changed overnight, when customers aren’t in the store, and the system has human oversight as well to ensure it has “robust governance” and doesn’t make mistakes. Currently, roughly 90% of the sections within the store have digital shelf labels, he said.

“We don’t look at it as technology for technology’s sake,” Cathey said. “So we always have a human in the loop, and we’re very focused on human judgment and their ability to make decisions.”

Walmart has been investing in its technology to modernize the business on both the consumer-facing side and in internal operations.

It’s rolled out an AI agent to help customers with shopping, automated its supply chain, invested in radio frequency identification tags and set the stage for agentic commerce as it embraces AI. It’s also spent billions on modernizing its store locations.

On Walmart’s most recent earnings call, its CEO, John Furner, said the company is seeing significant returns on its technology strategies, including its investments in AI.

“We believe AI will improve nearly every part of our business by making shopping better, and our associates’ work easier,” he said.

Still, digital shelf labels and the company’s AI push have sparked backlash. They have raised concerns about dynamic pricing and fears that digital labels could lead to price surges or privacy issues with collecting shopping data from customers.

But in an open letter last week, Furner said the company is continuing to “price the product, not the person,” adding the retailer does not plan to use customer information to set prices.

“Your income, shopping history, urgency or what we think you could pay won’t change the price,” Furner wrote.

Cathey, who’s been in his position for nearly a year, said his biggest priority when taking over the role was to focus on accelerating the speed of the technology that Walmart uses while keeping human oversight.

Several state legislatures, including New Jersey, have passed measures to restrict digital shelf labels over pricing concerns. Walmart said it has the feature in all of its stores in New Jersey.

Walmart in a statement called the policy an “overreaction, as digital shelf labels are not a tool for surveillance pricing and are simply a modern way to display prices.”

Walmart has also invested in drone delivery – which has come under similar scrutiny over privacy concerns – to deliver products to customers in as fast as 30 minutes. That delivery option is available in select states, including Texas and Florida.

Ultimately, Cathey said the new digital shelf label features are all part of the company’s bigger goal to ensure that store associates have more time to help meet the individual needs of customers.

And while investors debate whether physical retail or e-commerce is more important to the company’s business, Cathey said the new features show that both go hand in hand.

“It’s not one or the other anymore. It’s both,” he said. “We don’t look at it as a store or an e-commerce fulfillment. They’re actually one and the same.”