More than prices are falling at Walmart these days. The tradition of print receipts is also falling by the wayside.
According to Mobile Commerce Daily, the retail behemoth is hoping to transition the company to a provider of mostly electronic receipts.
While many retailers offer ereceipts, these are often simply emailed to customers but they typically offer no value beyond being a digital alternative to a print receipt. What is unique about Walmart’s take is that there is a strong mobile component running throughout a program that is viewed as an important strategy for innovating the in-store experience via digital strategies.
Walmart is actively testing the new platform in a select number of stores, presumably perfecting the platform for a widespread launch at an undetermined point in time down the road.
“We want be the leader at the intersection of digital and physical,” Wendy Bergh, vice president of mobile and digital strategy at WalmartGlobal Ecommerce, is quoted in the report. “It is a critical piece of Walmart’s strategy to lead in retail and ereceipts is one of the technologies that we believe is going to help accelerate us on that front.
“We know over fifty percent of our store customers have smartphones and they are looking to us for digital experience. The way we think about it today – just like they go to our supercenter in the physical world, our app is really going to be the supercenter for them in the digital world,” she adds. “They are coming to us and we are going to be able to provide them with a robust set of features, whether it is erecepits, pharmacy, shopping lists, mcommerce. Those are some of the features that we are already providing in the app and we will continue to build on that in the future.”
