Walmart expands Spanish-language online search capabilities after pandemic shift to e-commerce

Walmart Inc.
WMT,
+0.31%
said Wednesday that it has expanded the Spanish language search capabilities on its e-commerce site. As shoppers made the shift to e-commerce during the pandemic, the retail giant noticed a jump in the number of Spanish inquiries on its website, say Rini Joshi and Amit Vasant Bande, Walmart’s senior manager and senior director of product respectively, in a blog post. The site can now translate more than 600,000 frequently searched items with more enhancements on the way. According to data published in February from the Pew Research Center, the Hispanic population reached 62.1 million in 2020, up 23% over the last decade. “We serve all of America, so it’s only natural we should prioritize improving Spanish search functionality,” Walmart’s blog post said. Walmart stock is down 13.4% for the year to date while the broader Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
-0.59%
is down 15.3%.