Inside Walmart’s Social Shopping Skunkworks

The online social world can put consumer actions in context, which makes the targeting of retail offers eerily more precise. No wonder the world’s biggest retailer also wants to be the world’s biggest social-shopping company. Here’s how Walmart’s @WalmartLabs division is doing it.

Retailers have long relied on transaction data to get a sense of their customers. Buy Fage Greek yogurt at the supermarket and you may receive a coupon for competitor Chobani’s yogurt with your receipt. Buy a Batman DVD and you may get advertisements for other superhero films.

But what if didn’t buy that DVD for yourself, as the retailer’s messages assumed? What if it was a last-minute gift bought on your way to a friend’s birthday party? That context was not captured by the transaction data.

“Transaction data often works, but it often fails, in large part because it’s so narrowly focused,” said Robert Yau, the director of project management for @WalmartLabs, the retailer’s social strategy division. “With the growth of social media, we have more data points we can use to better target recommendations.”

Yau