Latest insights on Walmart Luminate from the CMA 2023 Conference

March 8, 2023

There was a panel discussion dedicated to Walmart Luminate at the Category Management Association’s annual conference last week.

It included a mix of professionals from Walmart Luminate, Shiloh Technologies (an API partner), along with category managers from Nestle and Sanofi.

The purpose of the session was to help attendees understand how consumer brands are utilizing the tool today and what they thought of it.

This was by no means an unvarnished session on Luminate considering Walmart representatives were on the panel. There were relatively scripted questions and there was a positive lean.

But nonetheless, we stopped by to see if we could parse through the positive bent and understand what was new with the tool and/or brand reaction since our analysis back in August (read this first if you want more insight on the tool). At the time, few brands had adopted it because:

• It was new
• It was considered expensive
• Many were unclear how it fit in or replaced retail link and/or other data providers
• Some brands expressed disappointment it did not tie into Connect targeting or measurement

In August, those that had adopted it expressed doing so because they wanted to be a good partner to Walmart, they wanted online channel performance data, and/or they felt it would inevitably replace Retail Link.

The panel commentary largely reinforced our takeaways on adoption and usefulness of the tool from our research in August.