Walmart's Deepak Maini: How Membership in Walmart+ Delivers Value to Engaged Shoppers

The CPG Guys are joined in this episode by Deepak Maini, SVP and GM of Walmart +, Walmart’s membership program helping members save more time & money with exclusive benefits. 

Follow Deepak on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepak-maini-49b9089/

Follow Walmart+ online at: https://www.walmart.com/plus

Deepak answers these questions:

1. Walmart+ has grown from 3 benefits at launch to 12 today — still at $98 a year. How does that expanding benefit stack change the behavior of the Walmart+ member in ways that matter to CPG brand partners — in terms of basket size, purchase frequency, and category loyalty?
2. Walmart reaches 150 million shoppers every week across ecommerce and 4,600 stores, with data mapped to the SKU level. How does Walmart+ membership amplify the quality and fidelity of that first-party data signal — and how should CPG brands be thinking about activating against it differently than they do with non-member data?
3. Before running Walmart+, you led the VP/GM role for Customer Digital Identity and Data Platform at Walmart. How does a logged-in, identified Walmart+ member change the economics of the digital shelf for CPG brands, particularly as agentic commerce and AI-powered discovery reshape how shoppers find products?
4. The honest question your CPG audience wants answered: when brand partners think about their joint value creation with Walmart, how should they be weighting Walmart+ member households versus non-member households in their investment strategies? Is the gap in lifetime value as dramatic as what your major online competition has seen with their loyalty subscription program?
5. The addition of Peacock to Walmart+‘s streaming choices drove a record number of sign-ups in Q3. What does entertainment engagement tell you about a member’s overall relationship with the Walmart ecosystem — and does streaming behavior surface any insights that CPG partners can act on?
6. Walmart Connect grew 33% in the U.S. last quarter, representing, along with membership fees, about a third of Walmart’s operating income . How tight is the integration between Walmart+ membership data and the Walmart Connect advertising platform — and what does that mean for a CPG brand trying to close the loop from impression to in-store purchase?
7. Walmart tested its first advertising formats tied to the Sparky AI shopping agent in fall 2025, with 81% of surveyed Walmart customers saying they’d used Sparky to check product availability and review specs before buying . How do you think about Walmart+ membership as a foundation for agentic shopping — and what does that mean for how CPG brands show up in those AI-mediated discovery moments?
8. Walmart has publicly highlighted share gains with upper-income households as a strategic priority. Does Walmart+ skew toward those households — and if so, what does that mean for premium CPG brands that may have historically underinvested at Walmart?
9. You ran Fire TV, Alexa Skills, and Amazon Music — all businesses that lived at the intersection of media, identity, and commerce. What’s the most important thing you brought from that Amazon experience that directly shaped how you’re building Walmart+?
10. Walmart+ is five years old. If you fast-forward five more years, what does the relationship between Walmart+ membership and CPG brand investment look like — and what should brand and agency leaders be doing right now to position themselves for that future?

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