Wesfarmers, the Australian conglomerate that manages the likes of Kmart, Officeworks, Bunnings and non-retail businesses, has signed a deal with Google Cloud to expand its capabilities in artificial intelligence (AI).
The multi-year group-wide collaboration will bring new AI experiences to brands like Kmart, Officeworks, Priceline and Wesfarmers’ membership platform OnePass, using the tech company’s agentic AI solutions. The goals are to make shopping personalised and to enhance employee productivity. This adds to a long-standing relationship between Wesfarmers and Google.
According to Wesfarmers, this deal tackles two of the biggest challenges in modern retail: growing customer expectations for fast, personalised service, and increasing operational complexity across large, multi-brand businesses.
For customers, this deal is expected to improve shopping across Wesfarmers' digital channels and in-store, while team members will have more time to focus on decision-making and operational priorities.
“As we expand the use of AI across areas such as forecasting, design and customer engagement, it’s important that we do so responsibly, at scale and with the right partners,” Wesfarmers managing director Rob Scott said.
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said AI is fundamentally changing the retail sector, enabling companies to develop deeper connections with their customers with every interaction. “By integrating Google’s agentic AI across Wesfarmers’ iconic brands, we aren't just digitising the storefront – we are helping them reimagine every customer touchpoint and automate their internal processes,” Kurian said.
Within the collaboration, Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience will be deployed across Wesfarmers retail – including both Kmart and Target – to help customers find products more easily, receive relevant recommendations and ease the journey from search to post-purchase.
Wesfarmers is also actively piloting cross-divisional agentic shopping with customers through Search with OnePass, allowing customers to search and shop conversationally across multiple retail brands in one place.
The conglomerate is also working with its retail divisions to deliver faster, more personalised customer support through new AI assistants. Unlike traditional scripted chatbots, these tools can understand context across a conversation, which should help resolve enquiries more efficiently.
Wesfarmers has made Gemini Enterprise available to all retail divisions, in a bid to improve how they analyse information, while automating routine tasks and supporting decision-making across functions, including operations, customer service, engineering, marketing and finance.
The collaboration will also see Wesfarmers investing in training, providing team members with the skills they need to use AI confidently, securely and responsibly.