Sam’s Club Unveils Dynamic Consumer Engagement and Feedback Community to Co-Create Products with Members

Rhea-AI Summary

Sam’s Club has launched the Member’s Mark Community, a crowdsourced platform engaging 50,000 members to co-create products. This initiative enhances personalization and participation in retail, enabling members to vote on flavors, test products, and provide feedback pre-launch. The community aims to ensure products align with evolving member needs and preferences. This strategy, exemplified by the development of a grill based on member reviews, underscores Sam’s Club's commitment to innovative and quality products aligned with member values. Future plans include expanding participation to all Sam's Club members.

Positive

• Engages 50,000 members for direct feedback, enhancing personalization.
• Member-driven product development ensures alignment with consumer needs.
• Innovative griller feedback led to tailored product features.
• Commitment to quality, innovation, and regeneration in product offerings.
• Potential future expansion to include all Sam's Club members.

Negative

• Initial involvement to a small proportion of total members.
• Potential risk of slower product development due to extensive feedback loops.
• High reliance on member participation might not scale as expected.

Pioneers a crowdsourced process to capture and act upon feedback from its Member’s Mark Community, which has emerged at scale with 50,000 engaged participants

BENTONVILLE, Ark.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Sam’s Club, one the world’s leading retailers and digital innovation pioneer, today announced a new, consumer-driven process to retail that dynamically engages with members to shape and contribute to Member’s Mark, the private brand offered exclusively at Sam’s Club. This Member’s Mark Community emerged from stealth at unprecedented scale with 50,000 actively participating consumers.

The Member's Mark Community enjoying the Member's Mark grill. (Photo: Business Wire)

Through the Member’s Mark Community, an opt-in network, Sam’s Club has unveiled a new level of personalization and participation in the retail industry, designed to enhance the member experience. With this level of dynamic consumer engagement, members play a pivotal role by providing valuable input on products before they reach clubs – from voting on exclusive flavors to rigorously testing and trialing new items. The continuous flow of feedback serves as the cornerstone for guiding the large-scale development of products, ensuring that offerings consistently align with members' evolving needs and preferences.

“At Sam’s Club, we have a long history of listening to feedback from our members and putting their needs at the center of everything we do. It’s an integral part of how we develop our Member’s Mark products, and in today’s ‘experience economy,’ our approach sets us apart from other retailers in ways that deliver real value to our members,” said Megan Crozier, chief merchant for Sam’s Club. “Our approach goes beyond traditional focus groups and surveys, with true engagement that will shape the future of retail by creating more personalized experiences for our members. And this collaboration is already happening at scale, with input flowing from 50,000 active members, and we see the opportunity to include all members in the future.”

This season’s Member’s Mark grill offering illustrates the community in action. The product development team identified avid grillers through a questionnaire verifying a wealth of experience and a genuine passion for grilling; they then distributed 20 prototypes to members in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metro Area. Members tested the grills – cooking, filming and reviewing their experiences. Their feedback led to the development of a grill that included adjusted features to ensure it was tailor-made to resonate with members' needs and preferences.

“The future of customer engagement is participatory as retailers and customers collaborate in commerce to create win-win experiences,” said R “Ray” Wang, CEO of Constellation Research, a Silicon Valley based research and advisory firm. “Sam’s Club is pushing the boundaries of retail in today’s experience economy with customer engagement strategies designed to get to the promises of collaborative commerce.”

Currently, the community primarily seeks feedback from members who mirror the broader Sam's Club membership base. The next phase will offer all Sam's Club members the opportunity to become collaborators and partners with the brand.

Sam’s Club relaunched Member's Mark in 2022 as a purpose-driven brand with a commitment to give members access to a better quality of life, while delivering the latest trends at affordable prices. Member’s Mark products have a focus on quality, innovation and regeneration, in direct response to member feedback, which showed they want to purchase products that align with their values, such as care for people's wellbeing and the environment.

The Member's Mark Community builds on Sam’s Club’s commitment to deliver an exceptional member experience and further enhances its convenience offerings such as Curbside Pickup, Scan & Go, and its most recent innovation: launching exit technology at scale.

About Sam’s Club

Sam’s Club®, a division of Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT), is a leading membership warehouse club offering superior products, savings and services to millions of members in nearly 600 clubs in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Now in its 41st year, Sam’s Club continues to redefine warehouse shopping with its highly curated assortment of high-quality fresh food and Member’s Mark® items, in addition to market leading technologies and services like Scan & Go™️, Curbside Pickup and home delivery service in select markets. To learn more about Sam's Club, visit the Sam's Club Newsroom, shop at SamsClub.com and interact with Sam's Club on LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240606817218/en/

Haley Maxwell

Haley.maxwell@walmart.com

Source: Walmart Inc.

FAQ

What is the Member’s Mark Community by Sam’s Club?

The Member’s Mark Community is a crowdsourced platform where 50,000 Sam’s Club members provide feedback to co-create products.

How does the Member’s Mark Community impact Sam’s Club products?

Members vote on flavors, test products, and provide feedback to ensure products align with their needs and preferences.

What was a recent product developed through the Member’s Mark Community?

A grill was developed based on feedback from avid grillers, resulting in tailored features.

What are the future plans for the Member’s Mark Community?

Sam’s Club plans to expand the community to include feedback from all its members.