Walmart to bring electronic shelf labels to thousands of stores

Dive Brief:

Walmart plans to install electronic shelf labels in 2,300 stores by 2026, the company announced Thursday.
The retailer’s decision to deploy the digital tags on a large scale follows a test at a single supercenter in Grapevine, Texas.
Walmart’s move promises to sharply expand the presence of ESLs in U.S. grocery retail locations, where the technology has been relatively slow to take off.

Dive Insight:

Walmart is looking to electronic shelf labels to help its employees update prices on its shelves, track product supplies more efficiently and allow them to provide customers with “an even better shopping experience,” Daniela Boscan, a Walmart food and consumable team lead in Hurst, Texas, wrote in a post on the company’s website.

Walmart stores typically stock more than 120,000 items and change prices on “thousands” of products every week, Boscan said.

Walmart is sourcing the ESLs from France-based VusionGroup, according to the post.

The shift from paper tags to ESLs, which Walmart calls digital shelf labels, will reduce the time it takes workers to update prices from two days to just a few minutes, according to Boscan’s post. In addition, associates will use lights on the tags to identify shelves that need to be replenished.

Walmart also expects lights on the tags to help workers assemble orders for e-commerce customers faster and more accurately by guiding them to products as they move through store aisles. The capability is similar to the pick-to-light capabilities Instacart offers retailers through its Carrot Tags, which connect with ESLs from various suppliers, including Vusion.

Walmart’s announcement sets the stage for the company to bring ESLs to a significant percentage of its U.S. store fleet. The retailer operates about 5,200 stores in the U.S., more than 3,500 of which are supercenters.

Walmart is following other grocers in taking steps to add digital price tags to its stores. Other food retailers that have added the technology include Schnuck Markets, Whole Foods Market and Good Food Holdings.