Walmart Poised to Use Google Glass When Technology Goes Mainstream
LAS VEGAS -- Walmart will be ready to implement Google Glass in mobile commerce when the technology goes mainstream, said Gibu Thomas, global senior vice president-mobile and digital in the company’s e-commerce division, in a CTIA show keynote Wednesday.
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Thomas said Walmart’s strategy is to give customers “the democratization of access to products and services that were traditionally beyond their reach” along with a means to take advantage of those products and services to make more sales. Walmart will monitor retail opportunities of technology like Google Glass because “before you know it, the next big thing of today will be the mainstream use case of tomorrow,” Thomas said. But technology needs to “strike the right balance” between affordability and value for Walmart customers whose primary concern is living within a budget, he said.
Today, the retailer is doing that through affordable smartphone and service plans, including its StraightTalk prepaid wireless program that offers unlimited talk, text and data for $45 a month with no contract -- including top-selling smartphones iPhone and Galaxy. And Walmart customers are using the company’s mobile app for shopping before they go to stores, while shopping and during checkout, Thomas said. He called e-commerce the “most disruptive” trend in retailing over the past 15 years, and said Walmart is investing heavily in e-commerce to accelerate growth through a personal, interactive experience.
In what he called a “surprising” statistic, Thomas said more than 50 percent of Walmart customers use smartphones, and the percentage is “rapidly growing,” he said. For Walmart customers under 35, smartphone penetration is some 75 percent. “Adoption is not a problem,” he said, and Walmart customers are using devices to shop as well.
Mobile devices drive a third of Walmart.com traffic for most of the year and as much as 40 percent during the holiday season, Thomas said. The usage is translating to more in-store traffic, he maintained, with Walmart app users making up to two more shopping trips a month and spending almost 40 percent more per month. “Highly engaged” app customers make up to four more trips to stores than non-app customers and spend 77 percent more monthly, he said. App customers who can shop “anytime, anywhere” are some of the retailer’s most loyal and valuable customers, he said.
By 2016, Thomas said, online sales via smartphone will reach $27 billion, or 8 percent of e-commerce sales, which are expected to total $345 billion or 10 percent of overall retail. Walmart sees great potential in “mobile-influenced” offline sales, as well, that are expected to hit $700 billion, or 20 percent of total retail by 2016. Mobile-influenced offline sales will be almost double the entire e-commerce market, he said.
Walmart’s strategy today is to create mobile shopping tools that are “indispensible” and “second-nature” to customers, the majority of whom don’t shop this way today. He compared the shopping experience via smartphone in coming years to that of finding directions today, something customers automatically reach for their phones to do.
Within the past year, Walmart has launched several features in its app including predictive text that automatically recognizes an item a shopper is looking for with a couple of keystrokes, and intelligent voice algorithms can distinguish between “peanut butter” and “peanuts” and “butter,” he said. Once a shopping list has been created, the app tells shoppers which aisle a product is in, notes the price and keeps a running tab of items added to the cart, Thomas said. The app automatically shows national manufacturer coupons relevant to the shopping list that can be redeemed digitally at checkout, he said. Walmart “geofenced” all of its 4,000 stores in the U.S., and the app prompts shoppers to enter a “store mode” that’s linked to that location to simplify shopping, he said. He also cited the Scan & Go feature that allows shoppers to scan items while shopping and then pay at a self-checkout register using a single scan of the app.
CTIA Show Notebook
Scosche Industries bowed a line of charge-and-sync devices for Lightning- and Micro USB-powered mobile devices. Five incorporate a two-in-one connector that can charge most new smartphone and tablets, the company said. The three-foot smartSTRIKE ($24.99) has a slim barrel, enabling it to work with most cases and battery packs, and a retractable version sells for $29.99, the company said. The strikeDRIVE PRO car charger ($49.99) charges two devices at once in a vehicle and has universal charging circuitry making it compatible with all tablets and smartphones, Scosche said. The company also showed the boltBOX ($24.99) and microBOX ($19.99), retractable charge-and-sync cables housed in a compact enclosure the size of a matchbox.