Our guest was Jeff Clapper, CEO of Eighth & Walton, and we discussed Walmart’s announcement that consumers will soon have the option of using instant checkout with ChatGPT to buy Walmart products.
Lainie: How will Walmart’s ChatGPT shopping option impact supplier efforts to increase product discoverability?
Jeff: It’s such an interesting and big announcement. Obviously, Walmart is building an excellent and massive media company alongside being, of course, the leading retailer. I think there was the possibility that this media buildout would be in some way disrupted by the rapid growth of AI.
Jeff: And this is such a brilliant and interesting change, or readiness play, to become a part of the search results and dialogue that everybody is having with AI engines like ChatGPT. To get back to your question, it’s funny, I just saw a super interesting example.
I don’t know how often you’ve experienced looking for a recipe, only to find someone’s blog post where you have to read their whole life story before getting to “How do I actually make this thing?”
Anyway, someone was sharing a tip with ChatGPT or whatever AI platform you prefer. They said: “Copy the link of that story or that recipe and say, ‘Give me a concise version of just the recipe that you find at this address.’ Boom! AI will give you exactly that.” Then they took it a step further and said, “Give me a graphic recipe card.” It gives you a little visual, graphic recipe card of everything from that blog post, which I thought was super nifty.
Then you could take it a step further and, as you mentioned, automatically recommend products that populate into a Walmart purchase or order. And then have them delivered right to your house. So connecting back all the way through to the purchase from all of those recipes. People are using it—the viewers and views of every website. Every content-focused website is really seeing the impact of AI.
There’s just far less traffic to websites today as a result of AI, and it’s only decreasing. And so I think it’s just super smart that Walmart’s jumping in here.
Lainie: What can a retail supplier do to prepare for the changes in the retail sales process as a result of this kind of personalization that AI can offer?
Jeff: I think it’s a little bit early to say specifically what those tactics might be, but I do think that today, suppliers at Walmart can invest time, attention, and resources into greater familiarity and usage of advertising in the Walmart Connect platform, which again is this media strategy that they’ve built out so successfully.
And so for suppliers, just don’t start at zero miles per hour. Even though we’re not yet sure how suppliers can engage with Walmart and its ChatGPT partnership, you could at least be up to speed on Walmart Connect and some of those options—what works, what doesn’t, what’s available—and start thinking in that direction. So that as those options become available, you are already in motion.
Thank you for listening to Three-Minute Thursdays, produced by 8th & Walton. Visit us online at 8thandWalton.com.
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