In recent weeks, Sam\u2019s Club members may have noticed a change to shopping online with the warehouse club retailer.<\/p>\n
As of the week of Sept. 1, Sam\u2019s Club has rolled out a new presentation layer for its website and app to 100% of its members, its svp of e-commerce, Greg Pulsifer, told Modern Retail. The app has a new look and feel with what the company calls a \u201cglobal intent center\u201d in the top left corner, where customers choose a fulfillment option \u2014 pickup, curbside or ship-to-home \u2014 from the start of shopping in the app.<\/p>\n
This allows the company to tailor and curate the experience based on which option they select and better communicate the difference between shipping and delivery. If guests select curbside, the app will \u201cmake sure that we\u2019re getting them the items they purchased before so they can get in and out and choose a slot that\u2019s most convenient for them,\u201d Pulsifer said. When they select the ship-to-home channel, he added, \u201cit\u2019s a big opportunity for us to start to tweak the personalization model to start to show some of those items to them that they may not have known we have.\u201d<\/p>\n
Furthermore, it represents how the retailer is working to adapt its entire business to lean more into members shopping from home without sacrificing the experience in its clubs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt gives us that entryway into knowing what our members are looking for and creating those better experiences for them,\u201d Pulsifer said. Some of the big wins of the new app experience, he added, are going to be the noticeable ones, such as faster load times and more elements to personalize.<\/p>\n
The company will also be able to offer advertising more contextually in the app through its Member Access Platform (MAP) advertising business. In an\u00a0interview with Modern Retail\u00a0at Shoptalk earlier this year, Harvey Ma, vp and general manager of Sam\u2019s Club MAP, said the company imagines advertising as a way to reinvest in clubs and improve the member experience through remodels or by raising employee wages.<\/p>\n
Lastly, the product detail pages will have better video capabilities and larger spaces for imagery, Pulsifer said. The company had been rolling the new experience out slowly over six weeks, according to Pulsifer, beginning with 5% of overall traffic and Android users.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs performance leveled and scaled \u2014 and we saw incremental value being added, and growth in our conversion rates and our average order values \u2014 then, we started to slowly roll it out to 100% of our members,\u201d Pulsifer said.<\/p>\n
The revamped app and web experience comes as the company has worked to reimagine how its stores work to complement its e-commerce business. This relationship is key as more than half of its e-commerce business is fulfilled from clubs, Pulsifer said.<\/p>\n
The company designed two of its newest clubs, in Grapevine, Texas, and Tempe, Arizona, as digital playgrounds in which to test new technologies and initiatives to possibly scale up to other clubs. One of them is to remove checkout lanes in favor of customers\u00a0using Scan & Go technology to check out.<\/p>\n
Another one of those tests is to vastly expand the amount of space in the clubs dedicated to fulfillment; Tempe has about 7,000 square feet and Grapevine has almost 6,000, while the average company-wide is around 1,500 square feet.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat doesn\u2019t necessarily mean every club going forward is going to have 7,000 square feet of fulfillment space. It\u2019s not the new prototype, it\u2019s just what we\u2019re going to test,\u201d Pulsifer said. \u201cA lot of that was based on the part of the business that\u2019s growing and giving our associates proper space to be able to fulfill those items for members, especially in the curbside piece.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company has also been creative in bringing existing elements of the store experience online. For example, Sam\u2019s Club announced in May that it\u00a0had started pizza deliveries\u00a0at most locations to encourage more online ordering. Sam\u2019s Club made 24,000 pizza deliveries during the last week of August, according to Pulsifer.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only does it add value to your Sam\u2019s Club membership, but it\u2019s also a surprise and delight,\u201d Pulsifer said, adding that the company has even launched jewelry delivery in 107 clubs. \u201cThese activations are getting our members to engage with us on a more frequent basis.\u201d<\/p>\n
Karen Kelso, a vp for the research firm Kantar who covers mass retailers and warehouse clubs, said Sam\u2019s Club offers conveniences that Costco cannot by\u00a0leveraging Walmart\u2019s vast fulfillment network\u00a0and by delivering in-house rather than through a partner like Instacart.<\/p>\n
\u201cParticularly with Walmart, low prices have always been their cornerstone, but convenience is coming in a close second,\u201d Kelso said. \u201cSam\u2019s Club is really working to deliver that, as well. The convenience factor \u2014 making it easier for time-starved members to get what they need and want and do it quickly \u2014 will be, absolutely, a competitive advantage for Sam\u2019s Club and hard to replicate for Costco.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, the company will have to find the right balance of technology use in the clubs that doesn\u2019t sacrifice the human connection or alienate less technology-adept members, Kelso said.<\/p>\n
Kelso said that since the pandemic, when the retail industry embraced digital-only experiences, the pendulum has been swinging back toward in-person engagement between shoppers and employees. Leaning so heavily into e-commerce elements can make it difficult to encourage that, she added, noting that she believes that is something competitor Costco does particularly well.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Costco is] a humming place \u2026 where people gather, and I think that\u2019s appealing in its own way. Technology being the main interaction might impede some of that human connection that is part of commerce, particularly in-store,\u201d Kelso said. \u201cSam\u2019s will have to figure out how they merge this, because folksy, friendly is part of Walmart\u2019s DNA; I\u2019m not quite sure how Sam\u2019s is going to reconcile that with this efficiency, automation, digital-first perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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