Costco Next was supposed to help Costco expand its online assortment through a marketplace model. So why shut it down now?
Shelley Huff, former CEO of Serta Simmons Bedding and former Walmart executive, says Costco’s decision may come down to one thing: complexity. Costco already has an incredibly strong trust relationship with its members, and adding a marketplace introduced more suppliers to vet, quality standards to maintain, customer service layers to manage, and another ecosystem to oversee. With Costco already expanding its first-party online assortment, the incremental benefit of Costco Next may simply not have been worth the tradeoff.
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