Walmart grocery customers can shop online via ingredient

Walmart Inc. is collaborating with multi-platform media company Meredith Corp. to turn meal planning into a shoppable e-commerce experience.

Partnering with Meredith, Walmart is offering online grocery customers artificial intelligence (AI)-based services such as meal planning, shoppable recipes, visual search, and chatbots. The integration pairs Meredith’s food content, hyper-local consumer insights and proprietary technology platform with Walmart’s customer reach, omnichannel presence, product assortment, omnichannel shopping experience, and delivery options.

As a result, the discount giant has the ability to match millions of products with consumers in real-time at scale. Through these new shoppable ad experiences, customers can meal plan and add recipe ingredients directly to their Walmart online grocery cart for in-store pickup or home delivery.

Visual search technology enables consumers to take photos of ingredients they have on hand and receive meal suggestions that incorporate those ingredients. And a voice-activated experience through Allrecipes Action for Google Assistant allows shoppers to use a Google Assistant-enabled smart speaker or smart display, like Nest Hub, say “Hey Google, talk to Allrecipes,” and search for a recipe by ingredient, keyword or dish name.

Meredith’s natural language processing and machine learning technology will offer a personalized suggestion for a complete meal solution available at Walmart for pickup & delivery.

Meredith and Walmart have also launched a social commerce promotion, in which popular Allrecipes videos become shoppable via Walmart with ads on TikTok. Consumers can tap the “Shop Now” call-to-action button in the TikTok video to load all of the ingredients into a digital shopping cart on Walmart, and be instantly ready for checkout.

Other features include a shoppable bookazine containing editor-curated recipes with “Allrecipes 30 Minute Meals,” available for sale in September exclusively at Walmart stores.

Customers will be able to shop for Walmart products across Meredith’s portfolio of brands, including Allrecipes, Better Homes & Gardens, Parents, EatingWell, and Real Simple. In May 2021, Walmart began directly selling select food products on popular food-focused television channel So Yummy TV in a meal planning-focused promotion. Viewers can shop for the ingredients of recipes featured on the “Unbox’d” program via all platforms.

Kroger, one of Walmart’s chief grocery rivals, launched a partnership with Meredith in August 2020 to offer an integrated media service designed to help CPG brands make advertising more shoppable. The service provides advertisers with closed-loop sales data from Kroger to leverage in campaigns across Meredith’s portfolio of food and lifestyle properties.

“Finding ways to help our customers live a little better each day is at the heart of everything we do, and that includes helping them shop more quickly and conveniently for affordable, high-quality products,” said Sarah Henry, senior director of content and influencer marketing at Walmart. “We know that customers today are increasingly looking to shop in the moment, both on and off our platforms. We are focused on meeting customers where they are discovering inspirational content and enhance the customer experience. This partnership with Meredith is an innovative way we can seamlessly help our customers while putting much-needed time back in their day.”

“This wide-ranging partnership with Walmart includes first-party data-driven ‘Make It Easy’ and ‘Kid Foodology’ programs, which reimagine the shopping experience with highly personalized content and ad experiences that deliver unparalleled value every step of the way,” said Corbin de Rubertis, senior VP of innovation at Meredith. “As children go back to school, parents return to the office and the fall season takes shape, Meredith and Walmart will help families prepare meals they’ll love and get them on the table faster.”

The partnership features a suite of custom, proprietary tools and content. These
Walmart operates approximately 10,500 stores and clubs under 48 banners in 24 countries and e-commerce websites.

Source: CSA