Dive Brief:
- Sam’s Club will continue investing in the shopping experience with an eye toward convenient cross-channel journeys, executives said Wednesday during a Walmart investor conference.
- Plans include a fleet-wide remodeling project that will bring stores up to the standard set by the warehouse club’s first store of the future as well as leveraging customer data to “enable personal experiences that no one else can replicate,” Sam’s Club EVP and CXO Diana Marshall said.
- “As we continue to listen to our members, we've learned that the key to winning is to give them more of what they want, how they want it, when they want it,” Chris Nicholas, president and CEO of Sam’s Club, said during the presentation. “We are not interested in asking the member to tolerate friction as a cost of doing shopping with us.”
Dive Insight:
Sam’s Club wants to deliver on customers’ demands for value and CX at the same time.
“Over the years, the club model has evolved,” Nicholas said. “Quality items at the lowest cost came at the expense of something — experience. We don't believe it's an either or. We are an ‘and’ company.”
The retailer aims to deliver on convenience no matter where customer journeys start or end. Two in five members visit the Sam’s Club app or website a week before making a purchase, according to EVP and End-to-End COO Tom Ward.
"We know that members want to shop at Sam's Club, and what we mean by that is that they don't differentiate between physical clubs and our website or app, but rather they want to shop seamlessly between all our channels, however and whenever they want,” Ward said.
The scan and go feature, found in the Sam’s Club app, is essential for making this connection, according to Ward. In addition to making it easier for customers to check out, the Sam’s Club app can personalize the in-store shopping experience through relevant ads and product suggestions.
Scan and go has a net promoter score of over 90, according to Marshall. The company is using the Sam’s Club app to deliver event notifications, purchase reminders and product discovery features as well.
“Members use our platform in so many different ways, and we meet them where they are on their journeys,” Marshall said. “That is the power of personalization at scale.”
The seamless connection between digital and physical shopping experiences has a significant impact on the bottom line, according to Ward.
Members who use multiple channels shop three times more often on average than those who only visit in store, according to executives. They also shop twice as many categories, spend 13% more per transaction and have a 10% higher membership renewal rate.
“We are excited about the opportunities ahead as we accelerate our omni-club ambitions,” Ward said. “Our members are asking us to do more and to go faster and all through seamless connected experiences, and that's exactly what you're going to see.”
The approach of Sam’s Club echoes Walmart’s overall strategy, which has likewise seen strong results on the back of CX initiatives.
