Game-Changing Insights on Gen Alpha Consumers Revealed

Walmart’s Experimentation with Gaming and E-commerce

When most people picture a shopping trip at Walmart, the images that likely come to mind include endless rows of products, fluorescent lighting, and a blue and yellow color scheme. They probably don’t imagine an underwater mermaid cove or a trippy outpost in the Wild West, but that’s exactly what they’ll find on Walmart Realm, the company’s new immersive e-commerce site.

Walmart Realm: A Virtual E-commerce Experience

Launched on May 22, Walmart Realm is taking a social media-driven play to snag Gen Z and Gen Alpha consumers. It’s part of Walmart’s broader trial-and-error process to reach a younger generation online, which has also included multiple partnerships with the popular gaming site Roblox and tapping into influencer marketing.

Walmart Realm is made up of virtual storefronts that are designed based on insights from Pinterest Predicts, a trend forecasting report that compiles data on the aesthetics that are most likely to go viral each year. There’s “So Jelly,” a fantastical coral reef drawing on the “mermaidcore” trend; “Y’allternative” a “Wild West meets gothic glam” town à la Beyoncé’s western Cowboy Carter look; and “Go Chromatic,” a futuristic city made of silver blobs.

The site was created by Emperia, a platform behind virtual stores for fashion and retail companies like L’Occitane and Bloomingdale’s. According to Emperia’s CEO, Olga Dogadkina, one of the keys to a successful virtual platform is to show customers something they haven’t seen before—a concept that Walmart Realm clearly embraced.

“Surreal environments are something we highly recommend brands doing, especially when we’re looking at younger audiences,” Dogadkina says. “The main reason for that is, when we think about omni-channel strategy, everyone knows what Walmart looks like—you don’t want the same type of experience online. It’s much more about continuation of the brand vision.”

Partnerships with Roblox and Influencer Marketing

Walmart Realm lives on its own web page separate from Walmart’s main site. It plays like a classic point and click game, except there are products like Elf lip plumper floating in the gothic desert cathedral and a chunky white sofa in the jellyfish cove. Users can collect Walmart sparks and play basic games to earn rewards like online discount codes.

To entice Zoomers to actually visit the page, Walmart brought in recognizable influencers, including Mai Pham, Nava Rose, and Makenzie and Malia Fowler, to promote the venture and curate its offerings.

While Walmart Realm is the corporation’s only owned and operated site of its kind, it’s not Walmart’s first pass at engaging a younger audience through e-commerce experiences. In 2022, at the apex of hype around the metaverse, the company announced two branded experiences on Roblox: Walmart Land and Walmart’s Universe of Play.

“Roblox is one of the fastest growing and largest platforms in the metaverse, and we know our customers are spending loads of time there,” said William White, chief marketing officer of Walmart U.S., in a press release at the time. “So, we’re focusing on creating new and innovative experiences that excite them.”

However, shortly after the two virtual worlds launched, Walmart came under fire from consumer advocacy groups for potential stealth marketing to kids. Ultimately, both Walmart Land and Walmart’s Universe of Play were shut down. But the company wasn’t giving up just yet.

In September 2023, it returned to Roblox with Walmart Discovered, a new experience that compiles trending user generated content (UGC) on the platform. According to Justin Breton, Walmart’s director of brand experiences and strategic partnerships, Walmart Discovered has accumulated more than 21 million visits and is the top-rated brand experience on the platform.

In March, peak time spent in Walmart Discovered was nine minutes. The success of Walmart Discovered showed Walmart that it could commercially benefit from gaming and e-commerce experiences.

The Future of Gaming and E-commerce in Marketing to Gen Alpha

Trends and Predictions

As Millennials (Gen Y) matured and came into their financial prime, marketers zeroed in on the generation before shifting their attention to the following up-and-coming age group, Gen Z. Now, as Gen Zers come into adulthood, marketers are looking to the next crop of consumers: Gen Alpha, the children of millennials.

While Gen Alpha (whose name was originally coined by social analyst and demographer Mark McCrindle) doesn’t have a definitive, universally agreed-upon age range yet, it’s generally accepted that Gen Alpha’s oldest members were born in the early 2010s. This means that Gen Alphas are still children who, without financial income of their own, rely on their parents—largely made up of millennials and older Gen Zers—to make purchases on their behalf.

Like Gen Z’s influence on older generations, Gen Alphas’ interests and preferences have similarly impacted their entire households.

Best Practices for Engaging with Gen Alpha

Gen Alpha is the first generation born entirely in the 21st century. The number of Gen Alphas is expected to reach 2.2 billion worldwide by the end of 2024. By 2025, there will be more Gen Alphas than baby boomers. Many believe Gen Alpha will be the largest generation.

Gen Alpha is only the second digitally native generation, making technology a constant in their lives. In the US, 36.2 million children (ages 0 to 11) are active internet users, exceeding teen (ages 12 to 17) internet users by 11.6 million, per Gamestanza’s February 2024 forecast.

Unlike older cohorts, Gen Alpha has never been without smartphones or social media. By some estimates, the average Gen Alpha has over 100 photos of themselves posted on social media before their first birthday, according to generations expert Dr. Eliza Filby.

In the US, the estimated 45.6 million children that make up Gen Alpha are already more diverse than the general population. According to the US Census Bureau, the growth in diversity is due to two key groups: Hispanic people represent 18.9% of the total US population, but 26% of children. Around 3% of the US population is mixed race, but this more than doubles to 7% among children.

A chart showing the amount of US children within the total population and their share of race/ethnicity, 2023. Marketers should keep the makeup of this generation in mind. Gen Alphas will expect the diversity they see in their peer groups to be reflected in brand marketing as well. This also includes diverse representation in terms of age, sexual orientation, gender, and more.