Innovation news

The retailer is launching a new virtual shopping experience based on an iconic movie home. The familiarity of a known location The retailer has adopted a creative approach to launch this initiative, creating the Sam’s Club National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation holiday shopping experience. This enables its members to visit a reimagined Christmas vacation home that was a key part of a Christm...

Following the success of its drive-in movie initiative and summer camp programme, Walmart is launching three new events for the fall, including store and virtual Halloween activities. Halloween ‘spooky street’ Over the summer months, Walmart hosted drive-in movies at 160 stores , repurposing its large car parks. Building on this, it will transform 100 of its car parks into ‘spooky stre...

Kroger has launched the first generation of Chefbot, its AI-powered Twitter recipe tool which provides customers with mealtime inspiration and personalised recommendations. Helping to provide meal inspiration and reduce food waste Chefbot has been developed in partnership with integrated creative and media agency 360i, and technology partners Coffee Labs and Clarifai. Chefbot is an innovati...

Walmart has revealed a new look and feel for its US Supercenters, with inspiration taken from airports to help its shoppers complete a fast and easy trip. App driven experience Walmart has developed a new look and feel for its stores, as reported by the Associated Press. Tested in one store, the exterior and interior of the stores will feature the Walmart app icon. The store entrance area w...

Walmart is targeting zero emissions across its global operations by 2040. The retailer also plans to manage or restore at least 50m acres of land and 1m square miles of ocean by 2030 to help combat the cascading loss of nature. On the path to becoming a regenerative company These new goals represent a raising of ambitions at Walmart as the retailer aims to play a leading role in transformin...

Kroger is partnering with Everseen, a leading AI-based vision technology firm, to monitor checkout and self-scan areas in-store. Identifying unusual scanning movements Located in Cork, Ireland, Everseen’s system helps retailers monitor customer behaviour, helping to identify missed items or products which may have been scanned incorrectly. Overhead cameras help to compare customer baskets w...

Having initially been in discussions with Microsoft to make a bid for the social media platform, TikTok, Walmart is partnering with Oracle and other investors to take a stake in a new company, TikTok Global. TikTok Global TikTok is creating a new company called TikTok Global that will be responsible for providing all TikTok services to users in the US and most of the users in the rest of th...

Following the launch of the first Walmart Health facility last year, Walmart has outlined plans to take the initiative to at least 22 locations by the end of next year. Targeting the Florida market The first Walmart Health facility opened in Dallas Georgia, followed by a further four locations in the state and one in Bentonville, Arkansas. This year, the retailer plans to open seven f...

Following a pilot programme, Sam’s Club is rolling out Scan & Go for fuel purchases. National roll-out by the end of the year Scan & Go has been hugely popular with Sam’s Club members, with usage increasing significantly since the start of the pandemic. Member adoption rate has doubled over the past 12 months. The retailer is building on this with a mobile pay-at-the-pump experience than br...

Metro Inc. is accelerating the roll-out of the FoodHero app to almost 100 stores, following a successful pilot over the last nine months. Saving customers 30-50% Launched last May, the FoodHero app enables customers to save 30-50% on unsold products that are close to their expiry dates. Following a pilot in five Metro stores in Montreal, over 30,000 products were sold via the app. Through t...