Sam's Club's Global Intent Revolution | Fast Five Shorts

Sam's Club has rolled out a new presentation layer for its website and app to 100% of its members, according to Mitchell Pardon at Modern Retail.

Shout out to Mitchell.

The app has a new look and feel with what the company calls a global intent center in the top left corner where customers can choose a fulfillment option, pick up curbside or ship to home from the start of shopping in the app.

The company will also be able to offer advertising more contextually in the app through its member access platform or map app.

Advertising businesses and its product detail pages will have better video capabilities and larger spaces for imagery.

The company has been rolling the new experience out slowly over six weeks, beginning with 5% of overall traffic and Android users prior to rolling it out to all customers.

Chris, are you yay or nay on Sam's Club's new app redesign?

Oh yeah.

Yay, yay, yay.

Till the cows come home.

I, I love, I love Sam's Club.

Man, they're so, so freaking smart there.

And that's another person we're going to be interviewing at NRF Paris, Dana Marshall, their chief Customer Experience officer.

So, you know, now when, with that said, like, I love Sam's Club, but you know, then I asked myself will this work for everybody?

By that I mean is this a design that everyone should just run to and start to emulate?

I don't think so.

Not necessarily, because I think it's a great design specifically for the warehouse experience, because when you're going to engage with a warehouse club as a retailer, you know, you're going to plan your trip around how you want that trip to happen because you're buying a lot of products.

So, so that's that.

But that's just one thing I love about it because I think it's very tailored to the specific dynamics of warehouse retailing.

But clearly, as you mentioned in the outset of the headline read, they're also improving their retail media angles.

And we've already talked about this on our show.

A lot of times they've already got scanning go in place in, in store too, which gives them a leg up on their retail media.

So if they're investing in their app to better showcase retail media, that's great.

They're gonna, they're gonna do well with that, that move strategically.

But the other thing I love about it, and I think this gives us a glimpse into why Walmart and Sam's Club merge their supply chains, is that it gives, it gives Sam's Club potentially direct access into Walmart's WFS network, their fulfillment network.

Their Walmart fulfillment services and the suppliers on their marketplace, which again, going back to retail media means more retail media dollars over time and a larger, at a larger proportionate scale than its competitor Costco because of what they're doing in the online space with their mobile app and website and what they're doing in store with Scan and go and all that money then can be in reinvest back in the business to create more competitive differentiation in the long run.

So it's just so fricking smart.

And it follows a game plan that we've been following since 2018, when I first kind of started mapping this out in an article for Forbes.

Like they have been doing it, they've been saying they're going to do it, it's there, it's clear as day.

And kudos to them for just nailing it every step of the way.

They are just amazing to me.

Yeah, I think the part that I think really stands out to me, and it might have seemed like more minor details in the press release that came out and in Mitchell's article, is that Greg Pulsifer who we've interviewed, fantastic guy.

Check out our NRF interview with him from earlier this year.

But he talked about how product detail pages will also have better video capabilities and larger spaces for imagery.

And I think that becomes even more important as we start to see an increase in language based search and people using other search modalities outside of, you know, going to samclub.com or using the app right there.

Now you're also giving the opportunity for this, this, this product on the Sam's Club.com site to be even more discoverable from more people, which in turn gets them more members down the road to get these discounts or more motivation for people to get these discounts.

And then I think the second thing you updated or you mentioned too is the retail media opportunity.

I mean they already have such a good idea because the members that they're, they have the members information, they know their past purchase history.

Sam's Club is very unique in that.

And that like you were saying earlier like this, should every retailer do something like this?

I don't know if that's true.

But specifically in the membership case here, when they know all these things about their members, I think there's a goldmine of opportunity here as they can serve up more personalized offers.

And as you said too, as they're moving out their checkouts out of store with their new store formats and they're really focusing on how do we sell more product online.

When people are coming into the stores, this is a great opportunity for them to do that.

They can hit, you know, fulfillment method right there.

When people scan the QR code in the store, they can hit promos right then, and they're like, I think this is a really smart move.

I agree, 100%.

100%.

And they've been building out their fulfillment network from store for this reason to new stores.

They're their back rooms are 6,7000 larger than a traditional store.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And shout out to Harvey Ma, former colleague from Target and now head of Sam's Club Retail Media, who we also interviewed at at Shop Talk this past year.

So, yeah, God, man.

We just we're interviewing up a storm in 2025.

This is great.

What a headline.