COLUMBUS, Ohio — Amazon and Walmart shoppers will notice some significant changes in their customer experience in the near future.
No more air pillows for Amazon
Amazon is moving away from using plastic air pillows for packaging. Instead, the company will use recycled paper because it's more environmentally sound and it reportedly works better. Amazon said it's already replaced 95% of the plastic air pillows with the paper filler. It's working toward complete removal by the end of the year.
Amazon began transitioning away from plastic air pillows in October at an automated fulfillment center in Ohio. The company said that it was able to test and learn at the center there, which helped it move quickly on transitioning to recycled paper filling.
“We want to ensure that customers receive their items undamaged, while using as little packaging as possible to avoid waste, and prioritizing recyclable materials,” Amazon said.
Digital price tags at Walmart
The paper price stickers at Walmart will soon become a thing of the past. By 2026, shoppers will be checking prices on electronic shelf labels, with the nation's largest retailer saying it will shift to digital price tag technology.
Walmart stores have more than 120,000 products on their shelves, each with an individual paper price tag. Each week, Walmart workers add price tags on new items, rollbacks and markdowns, a time-consuming and repetitive process.
The digital shelf label technology will allow Walmart employees to update prices with a mobile app, rather than walking around the store and swapping out paper tags by hand. What used to take a Walmart employee two days will now take a few minutes to complete, the company said.
CBS Moneywatch reports that Walmart will not use the technology for dynamic or surge pricing, a practice where retailers or other businesses quickly change the cost of products or services based on fluctuations in demand to due weather, traffic or other issues.
"It is absolutely not going to be 'one hour it is this price and the next hour it is not,'" Greg Cathey, senior vice president of transformation and innovation at Walmart, said in a statement to CBS.
