Walmart is taking the Amazon battle to new virtual spaces

As Walmart and Amazon compete to win younger customers’ retail spending, the former aims to capture Gen Z’s imagination with new digital experiences to ensure their engagement and loyalty.

Walmart Chief Marketing Officer William White announced in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday (May 22) the launch of Walmart Realm, a gamified marketplace of more immersive virtual stores created in partnership with influencers and targeted at social media trends.

“Walmartrealm.com pushes boundaries as a first-of-its-kind digital shopping experience with influencer-led virtual stores in immersive worlds,” White wrote in his post. “It’s fantastic, it’s inspiring and, simply put, it’s great fun. At Walmart, we are committed to innovation with e-commerce experiences designed for the virtual world.”

All three stores currently available sell fashion and beauty items in fantastic 2D virtual environments, all created in collaboration with influencers and millions of followers.

The move comes at a time when young consumers are disproportionately turning to social media stars to inspire their shopping journeys, according to the study “Tracking the Digital Payments Takeover: Monetizing Social Media,” a collaboration between PYMNTS Intelligence and Amazon Web Services.

Additional findings from a survey of nearly 3,000 U.S. consumers showed that 68% of Gen Z consumers researched products on social media and 22% ultimately made a purchase, the highest rate of social media purchases of any generation. Additionally, 3 in 4 Gen Z consumers said they plan to make purchases on social media, compared to less than half of the overall sample.

Additionally, additional research has shown that nearly 40% of Gen Z consumers use TikTok and Instagram instead of Google.

Amazon’s social commerce move

Amazon is also trying to capture the attention of TikTok users to increase engagement, currently building Prime Video’s audience on social media. In a blog post updated Tuesday (May 21), Amazon introduced Kane Diep, the creator who ran the company’s Prime Video TikTok account, which has 20 million followers.

“We work to highlight different cultures, relationship dynamics and intersectional identities that are not typically represented by leading entertainment brands or publications,” Diep said. “Prime Video wants to reflect all of our customers, which is why I’m focused on being a direct social extension of what our brand wants to achieve. The Gen Z and Millennial audiences you typically find on TikTok really want to learn, and it shows in our engagement data – the more representation we have, the faster the account grows.”

For Amazon, more followers on this account means more engagement with Prime Video, which in turn could mean more sales as the e-commerce giant increasingly integrates shopping features into the platform.

“We continue to see significant opportunities ahead in … areas where we are just getting started, such as Prime Video advertising,” CEO Andy Jassy told analysts on a recent earnings call. “Prime Video ads offer value to brands because we can better tie the impact of streaming TV ads to business outcomes, such as product sales or subscription sign-ups, whether brands sell on Amazon or not. It’s very early for TV ad streaming, but we’re encouraged by the early response.”