Walmart is taking another step into its rapidly growing metaverse commerce initiative.
In a brief announcement on its official Instacart page, global social networking and avatar simulation app Zepeto said it is partnering with Walmart to integrate e-commerce into their existing collaboration.
"(We are) partnering with Walmart to integrate e-commerce into Zepeto, allowing users to shop real-world items from No Boundaries’ latest collection without leaving the platform," Zepeto said in the Instagram post. "Each real-world purchase also comes with a free virtual twin of the item."
Virtual twins provide customers with a digital duplicate of the real-world product which they can use for their Zepeto avatar. No Boundaries is Walmart’s private label assortment of fashion items targeted at Gen Z consumers, for which the retailer launched a $2 billion refresh in June 2024.
Walmart first partnered with Zepeto in August 2023 with its private label clothing brand Scoop, taking over the "Runway Z" fashion space. within the mobile virtual world Zepeto.
During the promotion, Runway Z featured Scoop branding, with virtual goods based on Scoop’s designs available for players to buy for their avatars. Within the first month of launch, Walmart says it saw increased user engagement in Runway Z and purchases of virtual Scoop clothing items.
In January 2024, the companies said they were working on integrating immersive commerce capabilities into select spaces on the Zepeto platform for future brand integrations.
Other retailers including Ralph Lauren and Roots have also engaged in digital commerce via Zepeto.
For the past three years, Walmart has been steadily growing its presence in the area of metaverse commerce. The discount giant launched Walmart Realm, a 3-D virtual shopping environment curated by digital influencers and built upon the Emperia metaverse platform in partnership with Sawhorse Productions, in May 2024 and offered a back-to-college shopping experience in July 2024.
In November 2024, Walmart Realm launched a holiday update which includes four new virtual shops inspired by social trends from Pinterest and TikTok, with gifts and holiday ideas curated by influencers.
The retailer debuted in the metaverse by launching two new metaverse experiences on Roblox in September 2022 and announced in September 2023 that it would deepen its commercial activity in "virtual worlds," becoming the first entity to sell select physical items on Roblox.
Walmart’s IRL commerce shop in the experience enables Roblox users to check out the real world items chosen by its partner user generated content (UGC) creators, MD17, Junozy & Sarabxlla.
The company has also tested immersive commerce in a variety of online worlds, including the Supercampus gamified Roblox environment. In January 2024, Walmart began providing developers in the Unity real-time 3D development environment the ability to integrate its commerce application programming interfaces (APIs) directly into their games and apps to sell physical items in real-time 3D experiences across more than 20 metaverse platforms.
Source: https://chainstoreage.com/walmart-expands-zepeto-metaverse-collaboration-include-e-commerce