Digital innovation and technology trends in retail

Walmart hasn’t been shy about its AI ambitions. The retail giant announced an AI framework centered around four super agents last summer, enabled purchases within ChatGPT last fall and in January announced a new partnership with Google’s Gemini.

If it sounds like Walmart is moving fast, that’s intentional.

“For the last year or two, we’ve been tinkering with it,” Daniel Danker, executive vice president of AI acceleration, product and design at Walmart, said at the ICR Conference in January. “This is the year where tinkering becomes transformation. This is the year where we’ve built a level of mastery around that and we’ll start building things that deeply address customer problems.”

Danker has many examples of how AI could improve the Walmart shopping experience. For one thing, he sees repeat grocery purchases transitioning to a more automated model, with AI understanding how frequently to replenish items. For another, he envisions customers scrolling through AI-generated photos of themselves wearing the clothes they’re considering buying, or asking AI for recommendations based on what’s already in their closet. 

“I think of us all as carpenters, and we’ve all been using screwdrivers and suddenly someone shows up with a drill,” Danker said. “There are things you couldn’t build without power tools that you can with power tools. AI is a power tool for us.”

Danker also envisions shoppers doing a lot less scrolling across the board, thanks to the new level of personalization AI offers. That shift includes Walmart learning which products a customer wants to splurge on and which they prefer value offerings for; it includes narrowing a shopper’s search results to a specific product that might best fit their needs and suggesting others that complement their purchases.

“By the time you have the tomato paste and the ground beef and mozzarella, we're pretty sure you're making lasagna — and we don't need you to search eight times and scroll through many, many pages just to add the basil and the tomato sauce and the ricotta,” Danker said. “Those experiences are going to become more human, more connected. They'll understand your intent, and they'll serve it up to you much more easily.”

Walmart’s customer AI agent, Sparky, can already recognize if a specific shopper buys the same items every week and suggest a new order to that customer when they enter the app. It can field customer service questions and answer questions like, “What do I use to get this wine stain out of my carpet?” It can remind shoppers that they have an appointment at Walmart’s auto care center and also a prescription to pick up. 

Long-term, Danker believes that the Sparky chat interface and Walmart’s traditional search bar will collapse into one search system. But for now, the two exist separately.

“It's not going to happen overnight. It's also not going to happen all at once, but I do think this is a year where we will be delivering transformative experiences in commerce,” Danker said. “So you will definitely look back a year from now and say ‘Gosh, that's quite different than how I used to use Walmart. That's quite different than the expectations I used to bring when I opened an app.’”

What Danker is most excited about is the potential for Walmart to enter the chat as shoppers ask services like Chat GPT and Gemini questions that aren’t directly related to shopping. Customers who are unsure of their needs may ask these services about what type of TV would fit in their space, how to get that wine stain out or how to handle a new challenge that’s emerged with their newborn baby. Those, Danker argues, are questions that may not start with the intent to purchase, but could end up that way if Walmart is showing up in those spaces.

The big-box retailer’s integration with Gemini allows users to benefit from their membership perks with Walmart even if they order through the AI platform and it can also add items ordered with Gemini to a customer’s live Walmart shopping cart online, so they don’t have to place orders from multiple locations.

Of course, Walmart doesn’t have direct control over whether its product offerings show up in a Chat GPT or Gemini search, but Danker sees the big-box retailer as well-positioned for the algorithms. Specifically, Walmart’s focus on price and speed will give it a leg up if AI agents are making selections for shoppers, according to Danker.

Walmart’s stores will also see benefits from AI. Over time, the retailer plans to digitize the in-store experience and integrate some of those same AI-driven experiences into a physical environment. Associates are already using their own AI agent on the backend to assist with restocking shelves efficiently and prioritizing when things like spills happen. Walmart’s fulfillment centers are also using the technology to better predict what products they should store.

Not everything Walmart tries will be successful, but Danker is OK with that.

“The risk is that we build a few things that don't stick. I'd say there's a much bigger risk to not being out front,” Danker said. “We're going to lead because we think that it can do things for customers that we genuinely couldn't do before … the only way we'll get to the thing that works really well is by trying a lot of things along the way. And we're very lucky to be able to do that.”

In his annual letter to shareholders, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy touted the virtues of following “squiggly lines” rather than straight ones.

This applies to the letter itself.

Jassy opened the missive with the hopes and dreams he had in college, contrasting them with details about the odd jobs he took before graduate school and then “ending up at Amazon three days after my last final exam in May 1997.”

An anecdote about attending hockey games with his dad — a treasured tradition — illustrates what he holds up as an important principle at the e-commerce giant: “Be willing to pursue parallel paths when it’s unclear what’ll best drive the desired trajectory (2 > 0).”

The biggest takeaway, though, has little to do with post-graduate wanderings or the New York Rangers. Jassy defended Amazon’s investment in artificial intelligence and joins Nvidia founder-CEO Jensen Huang in pushing back against fears of an AI bubble. The rationale is reflected in a litany of returns poised to accrue to the company, mostly at Amazon’s AWS cloud unit, and its shareholders.

“We’re not investing approximately $200 billion in capex in 2026 on a hunch,” Jassy wrote.

Closer to retail, Jassy reiterated the company’s investments in rural America, saying “we understand that rural customers are often de-prioritized by logistics and telecom providers because remote communities are more expensive to serve.”

“While other companies have been backing away from these customers, we’ve been running to them,” he said. “We’ve committed over $4 billion to expand our rural delivery network.”

Amazon is also investing in drones and speedier fulfillment to achieve faster delivery of more items to more geographies. And a convoluted project to rewire virtual shopping assistant Alexa into Alexa+ was worth it, according to Jassy.

“The new Alexa+ is so much more capable, useful, and smart than her prior self,” he said, adding that, as a result, customers are spending more time with Alexa, making triple the purchases on devices.

As he did in fall 2025, Jassy acknowledged the dominance of brick-and-mortar retail despite three decades of digital disruption but framed it as a massive opportunity for Amazon.

“Our retail business is now approaching $600 billion in topline, yet roughly 80% of global retail sales still happens in physical stores,” he said. “That will change.”

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By Workday

Somewhere right now, store manager is off the shop floor, working through a stack of seasonal-hire applications instead of leading a team. A shift supervisor is short three people during a traffic surge no one saw coming. A payroll specialist is reconciling data across three disconnected systems. An HR director is answering the same benefits question for the twentieth time this month.

None of this is the work these people were hired to do. Across the retail industry, it adds up to millions of hours lost every year to technology that was never designed to give that time back.

That's beginning to change. AI is reshaping how retail operates and the retailers seeing the biggest returns aren't chasing the flashiest tools. They're rethinking how people and AI work together.

The cost of fragmentation

Most retailers run HR in one system, workforce management in another and finance in a third. None of them share data, context, or process continuity. That fragmentation has always been a drag on productivity and in the AI era, it becomes a ceiling. People end up acting as the integration layer themselves—re-entering information, chasing missing fields and reconciling across systems that were never designed to work together.

The retailers pulling ahead are consolidating onto a single platform that connects HR, workforce management and finance, with AI embedded from the start. The point isn't to add another layer of technology. It's to remove the complexity that shouldn't have been there in the first place.

From recording work to doing it

Enterprise software was built to capture transactions. AI changes that, moving technology from recording work to actually doing it and taking on the repetitive tasks that pull teams away from higher-value work.

Nowhere is the shift more visible than in how retailers manage frontline operations, where retail's biggest challenges live: constant hiring, shifting schedules, high turnover and customer expectations that don't wait.

Hiring is the clearest example. Store leaders carry the burden of screening, scheduling and coordinating interviews on top of running operations, often bouncing between job boards, email, scheduling apps and spreadsheets just to keep roles filled. At 7-Eleven, Inc., AI now manages 95% of store hiring, cutting time-to-fill by 70% and returning more than 2 million manager hours per year. The ratio holds true at a smaller scale too; any retailer dealing with constant turnover can see proportional returns.

The pattern extends across the back office. Self-service AI is driving a 20% improvement in manager and employee productivity by replacing help desk tickets with real-time answers. AI agents can also take on the manual work of managing staffing changes, so store leaders can respond to a call-out or a surge in traffic without derailing the rest of their day. Modern deployment approaches mean those capabilities can go live in weeks, not months.

Why trust matters

AI is powerful, but retail operates in domains where "probably right" isn't good enough: payroll, compliance, workforce management. A single error ripples across hundreds of employees and dozens of locations.

In a recent survey, the vast majority of IT leaders said an error rate of 1% or more is unacceptable in critical functions like finance and HR. People get paid or they don't. The books balance or they don't. Compliance is met or it isn't.

The AI that works in retail is grounded in actual business context—people data, financial data, organizational rules and permissions. It runs on the same governance and security framework already trusted for mission-critical processes, built into the core rather than bolted on at the edges. Every action is auditable and every agent operates within the same controls a human would.

One connected picture

The biggest opportunity isn't any single AI use case. It's what happens when people and financial data live on one platform and AI can work across both. The principle is simple: no one should have to care where the data lives. They should just see the work get done.

HR intelligence informs financial planning. Workforce forecasts align with demand signals. Store operations, talent strategy and financial performance stop being three separate conversations and become one connected view of the business.

That's the new work day for retail: a simpler, smarter foundation where AI handles the routine so people can focus on the strategic, the creative and the human. The retailers who embrace it won't just operate more efficiently, they'll build organizations where people want to work and where the back office finally moves as fast as the front line.

TikTok has drawn droves of marketers for its ability to turn products of all stripes, from Stanley tumblers to cranberry juice, into viral sensations. Since the social platform launched its Shop e-commerce marketplace in the U.S., brands have gotten better at quantifying just how much video crazes are translating into sales. TikTok Shop’s stature is growing enough to influence how retailers think about product mix, demand forecasting and content strategy, according to speakers at the National Retail Federation’s Big Show.   

“It’s a place for us to learn what’s working versus not,” said Richard Cox, chief merchandising officer of the Gen Z-focused retailer Pacsun, during a panel at the trade conference. 

At the same time, Shop has gotten more crowded and competitive. It acts as a “bonafide retailer,” one NRF speaker said, hosting its own Prime Day-like deals bonanzas called Super Brand Days. Shop is robust enough at this point that TikTok no longer offers brands some of the incentives it once did to use the feature. A fresh level of maturity comes as the retail industry is beset by challenges related to tariffs and pullbacks in discretionary spending.

“Our main operational challenge is around profitability,” said Jenna Manula Linares, vice president of digital marketing at Tarte Cosmetics, during the panel. “As their platform has scaled, they started pulling back in what they’d been funding for us.

“We also know that the TikTok customer is value-driven,” added Linares. “So now we are at this intersection where we’re trying to find the balance between how much value [we can] offer a customer while still being conscious of our bottom line.”

Sales follow virality

TikTok Shop increasingly seems like one of the first major success stories for social commerce in the U.S. The marketplace accounted for about one-fifth of the social commerce segment in 2025 and is forecast by eMarketer to exceed $20 billion in sales in 2026.

Pacsun’s first pop on TikTok Shop came as something of a surprise. Around Black Friday in 2023, a smaller influencer posted a video about the retailer’s Casey jeans, a low-rise, baggy cut of denim. The availability of the item on TikTok Shop dovetailing with a key holiday sales window resulted in 11,000 pairs sold on Black Friday alone, along with a long tail of popularity.  

“We’ve sold over 100,000 pairs of that jean. In terms of halo effect, it’s helped our entire denim business,” said Cox. 

Other brands on the panel shared similar case studies that speak to how Shop can link buzzy content to business results, sometimes in a chaotic fashion. In 2025, Tarte — among the early adopters of Shop — noticed that creators were participating in a strange trend: They would draw under their eyes with a permanent black Sharpie and then cover up the markings with the brand’s CC under-eye color corrector, a testament to the concealer’s efficacy. Tarte has sold nearly 600,000 units of the product on TikTok Shop in the U.S., according to Linares, while noticing stronger demand in international markets through direct-to-consumer channels.    

That said, Shop requires a different approach than a traditional DTC or e-commerce site. Tarte promotes a smaller assortment on Shop because the brand “can’t control the algorithm,” Linares explained. Speakers noted that TikTok’s unpredictable nature is disrupting some of the fundamentals of retail, increasing a reliance on social listening, media mix modeling and “analytics horsepower.”

“It kind of turns everything we all know about demand planning on its head,” said Feliz Papich, senior vice president of digital technology, experience and insights at Crocs. 

Go with the flow

By that same token, marketers are adjusting some of their brand content to feed the Shop pipeline. Tarte, for instance, has introduced a mascot named Shapey, based on its shape-tape concealer, to attract viewers organically to its profile. 

“If you come to our page, you’re actually not going to see a ton of tutorials or before and afters,” said Linares. “We’re doing a lot around humor.”

The discussion also touched on co-creation, the idea of enlisting everyday customers to create content on behalf of a brand. Some retailers may not like relinquishing that degree of control but ultra-polished ads don’t perform as well in TikTok environments, according to Cox. Additionally, high-performing organic content is becoming valuable fodder to convert into paid media or material for other social platforms.

A willingness to roll the dice on such marketing experiments is just one piece of the Wild West mindset needed to succeed on TikTok, an app that is still in the process of figuring out its future in the U.S. following a ban threat.

“TikTok wants to partner with brands that are willing to take smart risks and to move fast. They’re not going to read your legal red lines,” said Linares. “Just say yes and go with the flow.”

Instant Checkout on ChatGPT launched with a splash in 2025, initially debuting in partnership with Etsy and Shopify. Now, ChatGPT has pivoted to focus on the discovery part of the shopping journey, letting the retailers and brands tackle the purchase portion.

Walmart debuted an in-platform app experience in OpenAI’s ChatGPT backed by its commerce agent Sparky, according to information from OpenAI and Walmart. The experience supports the full shopping journey, taking users from discovery in ChatGPT to a Walmart environment supporting account linking, loyalty and payment. 

The revamped Walmart experience on ChatGPT comes as OpenAI rethinks the Instant Checkout experience, which launched in September and allowed users to complete purchases within ChatGPT. The AI company “found that the initial version of Instant Checkout did not offer the level of flexibility that we aspire to provide, so we’re allowing merchants to use their own checkout experiences while we focus our efforts on product discovery,” per the announcement. 

As such, OpenAI is expanding the Agentic Commerce Protocol to better support product discovery on ChatGPT. Retailers such as Target, Sephora, Nordstrom, Lowe’s, Best Buy, The Home Depot and Wayfair have integrated into ACP, OpenAI said.

OpenAI says it is learning from early launches and incorporating feedback from users and merchants to improve what shopping looks like on ChatGPT.

Walmart joined in on the Instant Checkout functionality about a month after it launched. The retailer’s revamped experience is now available in web browsers and ChatGPT app access in iOS and Android is soon to come.

“Shopping can start anywhere now, whether that’s Walmart or a question in ChatGPT,” Daniel Danker, executive vice president of AI acceleration, product and design at Walmart, said in a statement shared with Retail Dive. “Our approach is simple: wherever it begins, customers still get the same personalized Walmart experience, including our assortment, value and speed. With Sparky, we’re bringing our trusted experience into more places." 

Merchants can share product feeds and promotions with OpenAI and their catalogs are more fully represented in ChatGPT with the updated ACP. The platform supports “multiple delivery paths, including through third-party providers like Salesforce and Stripe, so merchants can participate with the systems they already use,” per the announcement.

The refreshed ACP is intended to bring merchants higher-intent shoppers who are more ready to finalize a purchase. The updates are rolling out to all ChatGPT member tiers in March.

More than half (54%) of North American retailers can’t keep up with the rapid pace of technological changes, according to a Jumpmind survey of 112 retailers conducted by Retail Systems Research. 

While nearly half of respondents said they have difficulty in quantifying the return on their in-store tech enhancements, over a third (37%) expressed uncertainty regarding whether new technology will be useful or distracting to their businesses, the survey found.

Almost a third (34%) of retailers said they cannot keep up with consumer adoption of new tech tools, and nearly the same proportion said investing in those tools is too expensive, per the survey results.

Though there is uncertainty among retailers regarding their in-store investments, retailers are eyeing point-of-sale, order fulfillment and other tech tools to support their operations, according to the survey.

For “retail winners,” those with 7% or more year-over-year sales growth, two-thirds plan to implement mobile devices to serve as point-of-sale terminals, and 63% said they’re rolling out in-store fulfillment tools, the survey found. 

“The need for digital enablement in the store is real and urgent,” Steve Rowen, managing partner at RSR, said in a statement. “Consumers want a shopping experience that is more information-rich so that they can help themselves; retailers want to create new efficiencies to counteract the new costs associated with omnichannel selling, and employees just want to keep up with hyper-informed shoppers.”

The report also builds upon previous research indicating that stores continue to be a heavily trafficked channel. It noted that 80% of all retail transactions occur in stores. Meanwhile, a separate report from EY forecast that the share of offline retail will comprise 77% of transactions this year and 73% by 2028. 

Along with technological upgrades, retailers have been focused on one tech tool in particular: artificial intelligence. More than half of retailers have increased their spending on generative AI this year compared to last year, according to a Capgemini report.

Larger retailers like Target and Walmart are also doubling down on their AI bets. Walmart is developing its AI agent capabilities, improving its customer-facing AI assistant, Sparky, and streamlining staff workflows. Michael Fiddelke, who will soon transition from COO to CEO at Target, said on a recent earnings call the retail chain has been using AI and other tech tools to “build an updated forecast more accurately while spending less time creating them.”

But as more retailers pour capital into AI tools, some research casts doubt on the return on that investment. Less than a third of retailers think their current AI and data analytics capabilities give them an edge in the marketplace, according to a May report from EY. Over three in five retail leaders expressed concerns about the quality and consistency of AI tools, according to a recent Monday.com survey.

Amazon is reducing its corporate workforce by about 14,000 roles, the company announced in an internal note to employees from Amazon Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology Beth Galetti. The company will notify impacted teams and individuals on Oct. 28, but did not provide details about the types of positions impacted.

Amazon is offering most employees 90 days to find a new position internally — though that timeframe varies based on local laws — and recruiters will prioritize internal candidates, Galetti said in the note. Amazon will offer employees who either cannot find a new job internally or choose not to pursue one severance pay along with additional exit services.

The news comes after Reuters reported with anonymous sources that Amazon could cut up to 30,000 corporate jobs. The e-commerce company declined to comment when Retail Dive asked about that higher layoff estimate.

Amazon’s latest round of layoffs builds on CEO Andy Jassy’s remarks to employees in June that the company will need fewer people doing some existing jobs as generative AI continues to advance. 

Galetti told employees that the workforce cuts are intended to reduce bureaucracy, remove corporate layers and shift resources as the company works to stay “nimble.”

“Some may ask why we’re reducing roles when the company is performing well,” Galetti said in her note to employees. “This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it's enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and altogether new ones).”

"We’re convinced that we need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business," she said.

The move from Amazon also builds on a note Jassy sent out in September 2024, wherein he flagged that the company would evaluate whether or not it had the proper organizational structure to foster the speed and innovation it desires. 

Amazon is not the first retailer this season to announce layoffs in a bid to simplify its structure and move faster.

Target informed employees that it would lay off 1,000 corporate staff and close 800 open roles. Despite the company’s sales declines, the announced cuts are not part of an effort to save costs but instead intended to reduce corporate complexity and more easily “bring ideas to life,” incoming CEO Michael Fiddelke said.

“Unlike the Target layoffs, Amazon is operating from a position of strength,” GlobalData Managing Director Neil Saunders said in emailed comments. “In some ways, this is a tipping point away from human capital to technological infrastructure.”

Amazon’s second quarter results in August showed online store sales increased 4.6% year over year to $55.4 billion and physical store sales improved 3.6% to $5.2 billion. However, the company during its earnings call with analysts was focused on the Amazon Web Services portion of its business, which continues to be a core part of its success. 

Target is moving full steam ahead on a turnaround plan with the goal to reverse declining sales and traffic numbers — and technology is playing a key role.

Current COO and incoming CEO Michael Fiddelke outlined his key turnaround priorities during a Q2 earnings call in August. The executive emphasized the need to regain merchandising authority and said the company must better utilize “technology to improve our speed, guest experience and efficiency throughout the business.”

Now, the company is providing tangible examples, showing how it is using technology — particularly artificial intelligence — as Fiddelke steps into the spotlight.

From merchandise development to its third-party marketplace, Target is weaving AI across its offerings with the aim to help human creativity along the way. 

That's why Target's Chief Information and Product Officer Prat Vemana believes it's the best time to be working in technology and retail, the executive told Retail Dive in an interview.

Moving fast on trends

The retailer is turning to its generative AI-powered trend intelligence platform, Target Trend Brain, to surface new ideas for its merchants, the company said in a blog post. Machine intelligence is helping to speed up product development in response to trends.

It connects back to Fiddelke’s merchandising authority focus through design, Vemana told Retail Dive.

“What differentiates us is that human element, that we are good in design,” he said.

Target Trend Brain aims to combine merchant creativity with AI-driven efficiency. Target is in the initial phases of using the technology to help the company’s merchandising ideation and plans to create collections at a faster pace, Vemana said.

“When we look at our designers, they're world class,” Vemana said. Such tools are meant to empower these employees’ creativity with the agility of AI. 

“It’s the designers who are the ones making the decision,” Vemana added. “AI is there to help.”

Reviewing third-party sellers

The retailer is taking a similar approach in how it reviews applications from sellers for its marketplace, Target Plus. The third-party seller offering launched in 2019 with the intent of being a more curated version of a retailer marketplace. At the time, Target described the product selection as “thoughtfully selected additions.”

Now, that seller selection process at Target is getting some support from agentic AI.

“We have agents that allow you to analyze every applicant to make sure that the vendor who applied is the right vendor for Target and for our guests,” Vemana said. “Agents allow you to actually go and look at the information available online and brings everything in a summarized form for the marketplace analyst so that they can actually review it in one place.” 

Target is using AI for the upcoming holiday season, too. Vemana said that the retailer rolled out its demand forecasting engine across categories this year, and its predictions improved with every new iteration.

“We are actually confident leaning into the holidays that leveraging the AI for positioning and placement of the products in the right places is going to actually reduce, significantly, any frustration,” Vemana said.

Of course, the widespread adoption of new technologies at a company of Target’s scale requires both employee training and encouragement to explore the tools within the safety of enterprise systems.

Growing workforce skills

In August, Fiddelke told analysts that the retailer had deployed more than 10,000 new AI licenses across its company since its Q1 earnings call in May. The increase in licenses is part of an effort to develop the workforce’s knowledge of AI, according to Vemana, who added that Target even had OpenAI come in to train staff.

While AI in general has been disruptive, the technology isn’t entirely foreign to the company, Vemana said. Target had already used it in its loyalty program.

“What we have done recently is lean into generative AI,” he said. “How do we bring the knowledge of the workforce up and running so that they can use tools like ChatGPT for them to improve their productivity?”

OpenAI has been making its way into the retail space for some time now, changing the search behaviors of consumers who are asking more complex queries to find product recommendations — a topic which Target executives have spoken about before.

But OpenAI has taken it a step further with the launch of Instant Checkout for ChatGPT, which allows users to make purchases in the chat platform without needing to leave it. The feature was launched first with Etsy and Shopify. Now Walmart will also enable the functionality and plans to develop employee training with OpenAI.

In October, OpenAI announced a set of apps users can talk with directly within ChatGPT with partners including Spotify and Zillow. For example, when talking with ChatGPT about looking for a new house, the platform can surface the Zillow app inside the chat and show listings for users to browse with an interactive map. OpenAI listed Target as one of 11 additional partners it plans to welcome with apps later this year.

In general, staying flexible with the types of AI models that Target experiments with — an approach Vemana describes as model-agnostic — is also key for employees like software developers, who are using what the retailer calls ThinkTank to test new ideas.

“We will be able to switch the models very quickly under ThinkTank so that you're not stuck with, like, one provider and one approach to how you problem solve that way,” Vemana added.

After introducing digital shelf labels to about 2,300 U.S. locations, Walmart is expanding the technology to all of its locations within the next year. 

The system allows the retailer to easily update product prices, reduce errors and eliminate the need for paper labels. The technology helps store staffers identify low-stock items and fulfill online orders quickly via a mobile app, which activates LED lights on the relevant shelf labels. 

The company will maintain the same price for all customers in any given store regardless of demand, time of day or which customers are shopping. The labels run on a closed system and don’t interact with shoppers or collect their data, the retailer said.

Walmart’s digital shelf labels are part of the retailer’s ongoing efforts to modernize its supply chain and order fulfillment operations. 

After piloting the technology at its Grapevine, Texas, supercenter, Walmart in 2024 set out to install it at 2,300 locations by 2026. Last May, the retailer opened its first “Store of the Future” supercenter in the U.S., which featured digital shelf labels, an updated vision care center and a full-service fuel station. 

Without its paper labels, Walmart’s store associates will now have more time to assist customers. Outside of typical shopping hours, store associates will review and implement approved price changes, so the retailer can maintain consistent prices throughout the day, a move it hopes will earn customers’ trust, the release noted. 

“Before [digital shelf labels], that meant walking up and down aisles swapping out paper tags by hand,” the company said in its announcement. “Now, associates manage planned price changes through a centralized Walmart system, making it easier to keep shelf prices accurate and aligned with what customers see at checkout.”

Digital shelf labels are helpful for retailers fulfilling grocery delivery app orders in stores as well. In 2024, Aldi, Gelson’s, and Hornbacher’s partnered with Instacart to integrate the delivery app’s pick-to-light system of its Carrot Tag software. The integration helps workers find items faster using flashing lights. 

Along with its new labels, Walmart has deployed other tech tools to improve its inventory management, fulfillment and other supply chain functions. The retailer, for example, is using AI and other automation technology to identify and resolve problems “in real time without requiring constant manual intervention,” Indira Uppuluri, senior vice president of supply chain technology at Walmart, told Supply Chain Dive. 

Walmart’s infrastructure investments will continue apace in the near future. Walmart president and CEO John Furner said during an earnings call that its supply chain investments will “probably peak this year and next year.” Days later, the company’s business data applications arm, Walmart Data Ventures, debuted Scintilla In-Store, a store data aggregator for supplier field representatives.

Puma has created its first AI Store Concierge, a multilingual AI assistant that provides advice to Puma’s customers. At launch, the tool is focused on performance running products.

Stored within a large digital display, the concierge tool can detect the language a customer speaks, including French, Arabic, Spanish, Mandarin and English. Through a conversation in that language, the tool can then provide information about product fit, performance insights and whether an item is in stock.

The company will debut the AI concierge at its Las Vegas flagship store. Puma intends for the tool to work in concert with store associates, who can use the information the concierge gathered to offer customers more personalized advice.  

As retail’s AI race heats up, Puma is embedding the technology into an in-store interactive display. The company teamed up with Google Cloud and LiveX.AI, a holographic AI agent provider, to create the device.

“Puma will be one of the first companies to introduce an AI Concierge in a store,” Rui Pedro Silva, vice president of direct-to-consumer technology at Puma, said in a press release. “By integrating this technology directly into the store environment, we’re making product exploration faster, more intuitive, and more accessible. With this first example of the AI Concierge, we will gather feedback and explore how to further scale this technology on our direct-to-consumer channels.”

Puma is launching its concierge tool in Las Vegas almost a year and a half after opening its flagship store in the city. The 25,000-square-foot store features an F1 racing simulator, an interactive arcade and a customization studio where shoppers can personalize their clothing and shoes, according to a 2024 press release. 

Alongside changes to its store experience, Puma has been trying to refresh its brand. About a year ago, the company revealed its largest global campaign to date across digital, social, TV, retail and other channels, as it looked to evolve its brand identity and attain long-term growth. Earlier this year, Puma appointed Nadia Kokni as vice president of global brand marketing, bringing prior experience at brands such as Adidas, JD Sports, Tommy Hilfiger, Hugo Boss and H&M.

The turnaround efforts come as the retailer continues to struggle financially. After cutting 500 roles in 2025, Puma said last October that it planned to reduce its global corporate workforce by more than 900 positions by the end of this year. In its Q4 earnings report in February, the footwear and apparel brand reported a 27% year-over-year drop in net sales. The company’s 2025 net sales fell 13% from a year prior. 

Interested in helping restore the brand is Anta Sports, which in January acquired a stake of more than 29% in Puma for 1.5 billion euros (about $1.8 billion at the time) in cash. Anta Sports said it isn’t attempting a takeover of Puma but will consider deepening the partnership in the future. 

Amazon is ready for its revamped smart cart — which looks closer to a traditional cart than its previous iterations — to roll out to more of its grocery stores. Amazon is expanding the deployment of its Dash Carts to over 25 Whole Foods Market locations by the end of 2026, Jason Buechel, vice president for worldwide grocery stores at Amazon, wrote in a LinkedIn post.

The expansion follows the company's recent update to its proprietary smart cart that includes additional carrying capacity and payment options.

The rollout of the updated smart carts to dozens of Whole Foods locations continues Amazon’s efforts to integrate its digital innovations with the specialty grocery banner, Buechel wrote. 

The latest version of the Dash Cart includes a real-time, on-screen tracker showing how much a shopper is spending and saving, a design that is 25% lighter and can carry 40% more items, and a scale for weighing produce. The update also allows users to select from more payment methods, which they can do at the start or end of their shop. 

The cart’s screen includes a store map to help shoppers locate items. Shoppers can also transfer their Alexa shopping lists to the cart. 

Amazon has introduced the carts to three Whole Foods stores so far, and the customer response has been “encouraging,” Buechel noted.

“The latest generation isn't just an upgrade — it's a complete reimagination based on direct customer feedback,” Buechel wrote in the LinkedIn post. 

Amazon debuted the Dash Cart when it opened its first brick-and-mortar Amazon Fresh store in Woodland Hills, California, in 2020. It introduced an updated version of the cart to several Whole Foods stores in 2022, and in 2024, Amazon began offering the carts to other grocers.

Since tapping Buechel to head up its global grocery operations at the start of 2025, Amazon has made rapid strides to integrate Whole Foods with its overall grocery business and technology innovations. Amazon has brought more Whole Foods executives into leadership positions under the Worldwide Grocery business, which was restructured in June to unify executives from both companies. 

Along with the Dash Cart expansion into more Whole Foods stores, Amazon is also testing an automated micro-fulfillment center in the backroom of the Whole Foods in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, that allows in-store shoppers to buy groceries and household items sold on Amazon via QR codes throughout the aisles.

Chandhu Nair, senior vice president of stores, data, artificial intelligence and innovation at Lowe’s, walks the store — sometimes every week — to gain real-world feedback on the company’s AI-backed assistant Mylow.

“It’s a critical part of how we work,” Nair told Retail Dive in an interview, noting that stores are the heartbeat of the retailer’s business.

Lowe’s launched its AI-powered assistant Mylow in 2025 to help answer customers’ home improvement questions. The retailer also launched a version for store associates, called Mylow Companion, last May. 

Home improvement is inherently a complex category for retail, which makes AI an even more exciting potential solution for it, according to Nair.

The home improvement retailer gets about a million questions a month between Mylow and Mylow Companion, Nair said. Given that Lowe’s has both DIY-focused and professional customers, that requires tailoring the technology to all types of questions and expertise levels.

“A lot of customers come into a Lowe’s store to do much more complex projects that they really don't have the expertise for,” Nair said, adding that those types of customers would often review several YouTube videos and read through blogs to help direct their project.

That’s a process that could now be synthesized into a home improvement assistant thanks to generative AI, according to Nair. Mylow consolidates guidance and relevant product suggestions into one space for the DIY customer.

For a professional customer who already has the background expertise for a project, the experience is meant to support a different type of inquiry.

“For them, it is very much [about] product availability in large quantities,” Nair added. “It is about being able to deliver the products to the job site on time, because they have to coordinate a whole bunch of things to make sure that that bathroom gets done, right? ... So we are trying to tailor our journeys tied to that for the pro customers.”

For those pro customers, they also often form relationships with their local pro desk Lowe’s associate — opening another avenue to tailor Mylow. The company has a pro-specific version of its associate AI suite to help employees handle their unique buying needs.

Pro-focused employees used to sometimes take a few hours to compile information and recommendations in preparation for calls with pro customers about their latest project needs. That process can now happen in under a minute, according to Nair.

“You can literally press a button as a product associate” through Pro Companion to help guide professional customers on product recommendations with the retailer’s AI capabilities, Nair said.

Another way the company has tailored Mylow and Mylow Companion is through language. The retailer launched Mylow with Spanish language capabilities for both voice and text-based inquiries, and it recently extended that capability to Mylow Companion in February.

“We [have] a lot of Spanish-speaking associates and customers,” Nair said. “So we needed to be able to enable both sides with that ... And that was a big part of feedback from the floor. So we continuously evolve and that same feature is also enabled online.”

It’s all part of the AI strategy at Lowe’s to not just build tech capabilities, but also drive adoption of new tools like Mylow.

“Driving adoption and impact was key,” Nair told Retail Dive. “How customers shop with us, that'll change, how we sell will change and how we work will change ... That simple framework gave us kind of an anchoring point to say: What retail functions should evolve and what kind of capabilities should be built out and adopted to drive, truly, growth of the business?”