Melissa Gonzalez, CEO and Founder of The Lionesque Group, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where she explains why she feels mixed about the Walmart's new initiative and what will make mass adoption of this offering difficult.

Closing Bell

Walmart Making Push to Establish Presence in Metaverse

well, one thing that has seen a lot of hype is the metaverse continued hype that we see to build around the metaverse in fact and the world's biggest retailer could now be jumping in walmart recently filing a series of trademarks, suggesting the company is looking to create offerings in the space as well as develop offerings in Cryptocurrency and N. F. T. S. So joining me now is Melissa Gonzalez Ceo and founder of the Lioness Group, a retail consulting firm Melissa. It's always good to have you on the show and you are our resident retail expert and so walk us through the opportunity here and that walmart is looking to capitalize on. Sure, absolutely. Um hopefully you can hear me Okay. I I think it's a very interesting thing for sure because um in certain applications, I think it's pretty intuitive and in other applications, I think that um it's not as intuitive that this could live beyond like a Gamification of it, right? I think that there's been a big, big growth of online shopping for groceries, um but unless you're doing a Gamification of it shopping for your groceries in the metaverse only seems to have a limited opportunity. So um I think that it's nothing new for a huge retailer, like a walmart to be experimenting with the possibilities of technology and with the growth of the metaverse, that makes a lot of sense that they're dipping their toes in it and often times when companies are diving into innovation, they are protecting themselves by, you know filing for trademarks and being able to own the opportunity of where it can take them. I think it's still early days, I think there's more opportunity in them working on it in other product categories outside of grocery. Um, and I do think that there's an opportunity of it for them to utilize this tool to be able to test and see what's resonating with the audience and also um from a brand standpoint, there's a lot of opportunities to kind of insert the walmart brand maybe and Gamification way with other brands as well. Let me ask you this, um melissa based on what we know and as a retail expert yourself who is always surveying the environment there, what would the consumer experience be like? I know you mentioned we would see it first rolled out with grocery, but would consumers need to have some sort of headset? How would they get access to it? How would they interact with it in their daily lives? Yeah, I mean they're not sharing too much information yet with with what their plans are and the video that's kind of been put out there. There is a headset component. I believe that video is years old, however, and we're definitely getting to a place that not all interaction requires a headset. I think that until we get to a place where it doesn't, I think it's going to be really challenging to have mass adoption. Um, but I think that with the, you know, if you think about as a perfect example of the opportunities with with um with roadblocks, you know, um the opportunities, if you look at what Fortnite did as far as the virtual world, it's not 100% Um 1-1 comparison. Um but it's it's when it's being able to be accessed without the extra headgear that I think that they have a bigger opportunity for bigger adoption melissa. Unfortunately we're out of time. We got to leave it there. But I know you'll be coming back on the show. I hope you'll be coming back on the show to talk more about retail in the metaverse here. Um throughout the rest of 2022 that is Melissa Gonzalez a Ceo and founder of the Lioness Group. We appreciate it.