Walmart will now let suppliers test products in its customers’ homes

Starting Wednesday, Walmart is launching a program in which verified customers can receive products at their homes, test them and provide feedback to suppliers — a move that serves to benefit both vendors and the retail giant.
The in-home user test program is for suppliers that pay to subscribe to its insights platform Walmart Luminate (which the retailer will rename to Scintilla in early February). Walmart Luminate researchers will help brands design surveys to collect customer feedback on new or existing products. Walmart will offer the tests to customers from Walmart’s Customer Spark community, an invitation-only group of Walmart shoppers the retailer has used to conduct surveys with since 2018 and began utilizing for Luminate clients in 2022.
Suppliers often turn to third-party research companies rather than retailers to perform market research, such as product testing. Now, Walmart will also do this by tapping into the company’s uniquely massive customer base and data capabilities.
Walmart Luminate’s customers include the companies behind some of the biggest brands found in the aisles and online, such as The Hershey Company and Kimberly-Clark. The platform also allows suppliers and brands to look at information, such as sales figures, inventory levels, data on shopping patterns and results from customer perception surveys. Last year, the platform introduced a tool called Insights Activation, which integrates with Walmart’s retail media network, Walmart Connect, to identify media strategies based on Walmart Luminate data.
Duracell was among the first brands to give Walmart’s user tests a try in September ahead of a new packaging launch. According to Walmart, Duracell wanted to ensure its new paper-based packaging resonated with shoppers. It specifically targeted Walmart shoppers who had previously purchased batteries. Walmart said Duracell found that battery buyers overwhelmingly preferred the new packaging and appreciated the move to recyclable packaging.
“Other research companies may have to tap into their panels or other third-party panels, and so what makes our capability unique is obviously the scale of Walmart, but also the value of our community,” Linda Lomelino, group director of product management for Walmart Data Ventures, told Modern Retail. “Because it’s an invitation-only community that leverages our customer database. We know who these customers are, and we can verify their transactional and behavioral data.”
Lomelino declined to share how many customers are part of the Customer Spark community but said it helped Walmart gather 3.4 million survey responses in 2024 and that its membership increased 30% over the past year.
In addition to being a feature to sell suppliers on Luminate, this is also a way for the retailer to make sure the right products are landing on its shelves in terms of packaging, pricing, flavor or efficacy.
“What we’re doing is essentially helping de-risk products going to market that maybe don’t resonate with customers, or helping suppliers really understand what may be wrong with a product so that they can correct those, iterate and launch better products in the future,” Lomelino said.
Because product testing is typically in the domain of outside market research firms, few, if any, other retailers offer similar services to their suppliers. Amazon Vine allows customers to test products and write reviews, but that is meant to inform other customers rather than suppliers.
Andrew Lipsman, an independent analyst at Media, Ads + Commerce, said this comes as brands have increasingly used e-commerce platforms as a way to test consumer demand for new product innovation.
“They’ll look at the sales velocity and other metrics; if a new flavor is getting uptake from consumers, then they’ll use that data to scale it broadly into the store and physical shelves,” Lipsman said. “If you have consumer data on the people who were able to test the products, you can follow their behavior over time, and so, in some sense, you can determine the longer-term buying habits of those consumers and potentially understand the lifetime value of that new product development.”
Walmart said the program is another step toward better understanding its customers and bringing the customer voice into every stage of product development. It also added a research services team last year to assist suppliers in interpreting its data.
“If you think about the journey we’ve been on, we launched quantitative surveys as a capability and then qualitative interviewing as a capability; think about this as yet another muscle that we’re allowing suppliers to use or another tool in their toolbox to help bring customer voice into the decision-making process,” Lomelino said.