How Walmart Is Hoping Its New Tech Will Help Shoppers And Employees
Walmart is rolling out digital shelf labels (DSLs) and RFID technology across its stores to improve the shopping and employee experience by enabling faster price updates, easier inventory management, and quicker product location. The technology addresses concerns about dynamic pricing while helping Walmart compete during a period of cautious consumer spending driven by inflation.
Summary
Walmart has deployed digital shelf labels (DSLs) in over 4,300 U.S. stores with plans for chain-wide implementation by year-end. These labels allow employees to update prices via mobile app instead of manually changing paper tags, significantly reducing the time required for price updates and store resets. For customers, DSLs include a feature that displays product location and price when scanned via QR code—a feature that has been used 5 million times since its 2024 rollout.
The company is also expanding its use of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology to track inventory throughout stores and supply chains. Staff use companion features like Pick to Light and Stock to Light to quickly identify empty shelves and manage inventory more efficiently. This suite of technologies is part of Walmart's broader strategy to accelerate product delivery to consumers, leveraging its presence within 10 miles of 90% of the U.S. population.
Walmart implemented these changes amid lower-than-expected sales in its latest quarter—its smallest sales gain in over six years—driven by consumer financial anxiety and inflation. The company has responded by more than doubling markdowns and temporary price rollbacks. However, the rollout of digital shelf labels has faced regulatory scrutiny over concerns about dynamic pricing and surveillance pricing. States like New Jersey, Connecticut, and Maryland have enacted restrictions, with New Jersey implementing a one-year pause on new electronic shelf labels. Walmart has clarified that its DSL system operates on a closed system, does not collect customer data, and is designed solely to display prices and assist with product location.
Key Insights
- Before digital shelf labels, employees had to manually update paper tags every time store layouts changed, requiring constant back-and-forth reference work that consumed significant time
- Walmart's DSL feature that allows customers to scan and locate products has been used 5 million times since its 2024 rollout, demonstrating significant customer adoption
- Walmart more than doubled markdowns in its most recent quarter as sales growth slowed to its smallest gain in over six years, driven by inflation and cautious consumer spending
- New Jersey enacted a one-year pause on new electronic shelf labels in July while studying their use, highlighting regulatory concerns about dynamic pricing despite Walmart's claims that its system does not enable surveillance pricing
- Walmart's DSL technology operates on a closed system that does not collect customer information, with price changes planned overnight and implemented by people rather than algorithms, though store managers retain the ability to adjust prices in real-time for competitive reasons
Topics
Transcript
[0:00] If you think about digital shelf labels, what we're doing here is trying to make things super easy for associates and the customer. And as you think about technology in general, that's what we're doing. These are Walmart's new digital shelf labels or DSLs. They're used in more than 4300 U.S. stores already, and expected to be chain-wide by the end of the year. With DSLs, employees update prices using a mobile app rather than using paper tags, which can otherwise take all day. Before we had digital tags, every single time that you would [0:31] do like a modular that is new, you're going to have to use everything in paper. So we're going to have to look…
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