Walmart says it is reinvesting savings from AI in pricing and customer experience
Speaking at Goldman Sachs' consumer and retail conference, Walmart US head David Guggina put the company's own AI assistant, Sparky, at the center of this shift.
What's happening
In remarks reported by Retail Dive, Guggina said AI has sped up delivery and cut costs, and the company is reinvesting those savings in competitive pricing and customer experience. The gains show most clearly in e-commerce: sales grew 24% year over year in the second quarter, the 10th consecutive quarter of growth above 20%. According to figures Guggina gave, weekly engagement with Sparky rose 60% in a quarter, and visual search lifted conversion 57% compared with text search; the assistant drives 40% higher average order values. Walmart lets outside AI agents such as ChatGPT and Gemini access its site, while Amazon has blocked Meta's new assistant, Muse, from browsing and shopping on its site. According to Guggina, many customers arriving through these channels are new or returning, and their organic repeat rates are very high.
Whose desk it lands on
The executive responsible for customer experience and e-commerce. When an AI assistant sends a customer to our site, can we treat that as a separate channel and track whether the customer buys again?
Our view
The CX Brief's interpretation, not a claim made by the source.
The boldest choice in the talk is not Sparky but Walmart's decision to open the door to outside AI agents: while Amazon blocks Meta's assistant Muse from shopping on its site, Walmart treats these agents as a channel that brings in customers. According to Guggina, ChatGPT and Gemini most often send customers straight to Walmart, and many who arrive this way are new or returning customers; but there is no figure for the repeat purchase rate Guggina calls very high. As assistants come between customers and stores, the question for retailers is no longer whether they can stop the assistants, but where the assistants will send the customer.
