The wholesale club is engaging with its private brand fans to connect with consumers and drive improvement to products.
Member’s Mark Community member Stephanie H. unboxes grill during member testing. Photo courtesy of Sam’s Club.
Sam’s Club has launched a consumer-driven process that is empowering its membership to shape and contribute to its private brand called Member’s Mark.
A division of Walmart, the 41-year-old Sam’s Club operates 600 clubs in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.
The process, known as dynamic consumer engagement, is all about using feedback from the Member’s Mark Community, which numbers 50,000, to enhance the member experience. The feedback, via the community which is an opt-in network, can range from voting on exclusive flavors to testing and trialing new items.
For example, to get insight on its grill offering, the product development team identified avid grillers through a questionnaire verifying a wealth of experience and a genuine passion for grilling. It then distributed 20 prototypes to members in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metro Area.
Members tested the grills — cooking, filming and reviewing their experiences. The 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.
As RetailCustomerExperience has reported, members are at the heart of every decision for Sam’s Club, according to Chief Product Officer Todd Garner.
Currently, the Member’s Mark Community is primarily members who regularly purchase Member’s Mark items from the club. The next phase, according to a press release, will offer all Sam’s Club members the opportunity to become collaborators and partners with the brand.
So far the Member’s Mark Community strategy is proving worthwhile. Since deployment, after a stealth mode in June, all Member’s Mark items have been given feedback or input through the community — from colors and flavors to ease of use. RetailCustomerExperience reached out to Megan Crozier, executive vice president and chief merchant, Sam’s Club, via an email interview to get deeper insight on the strategy and why consumer insight is so critical to the private brand’s future.
Q. When did the dynamic consumer engagement idea come about and what prompted the strategy?
Crozier: Member feedback and engagement has been a cornerstone of Sam’s Club since we opened our first location in Midwest City, Oklahoma, some 40 years ago, and member needs and voices continue to shape the superior products and experiences that define our clubs. The Member’s Mark Community was born during the pandemic when I had a poor experience with an inflatable pool I bought my kids — it burst after only a handful of uses. This disappointment served as both a lesson and catalyst to rethink the member experience and refocus on the core principle of the Member’s Mark brand: to create high-quality items at exceptional value.
We are not a top-down club; CEO Chris Nicholas or other executives don’t hand-select what products we develop or what items stock our shelves. We are a club by our members as much as we are one for them. In 2019, we understood we needed deeper member input and engagement, not just by ticking a few boxes on a questionnaire or answering a few survey questions by phone, but by truly influencing and critiquing our products down to the finest details. In the subsequent five years we’ve gradually onboarded new community members and have impacted the entire catalog of Member’s Mark products.
Q. Why is it focused on feedback regarding the Member Mark brand and will it be expanded to capture feedback from the entire Sam’s Club consumer population?
Crozier: Member’s Mark is a rapidly growing portion of our business, accounting for about 30% of club sales, and given it’s our private label, we have control and oversight across products’ entire development lifecycle — from conception to club shelves.
Our goal is nothing less than for Member’s Mark to become the standard for quality and value in clubs. To get there, our community of 50,000 members and counting will act as co-pilots to guide us to the products they want, the trends they’re interested in, and the flavors they’re curious about. Recently, in response to an inquiry about community members’ daily routines, they asked for more quick, simple, healthy meal options. Member’s Mark product developers got to work and created Member’s Mark Salmon Bites — an easy and delicious bite of protein directly inspired by our community.
Eventually, we plan to invite our entire membership base to join the community on a rolling basis.
Q. Why is getting customers engaged important and how was Sam’s Club approaching engagement prior to the new process?
Crozier: Member engagement has been an integral part of our club ethos for decades, but prior to the launch of our Member’s Mark Community, we largely relied on traditional feedback channels such as surveys and focus groups. While these methods were informative and helped us better align with members’ evolving needs and preferences — particularly as they shifted from brands impacted by inflation — we recognized their limitations if we were going to truly embrace tailored, consumer-driven retail.
Now, community members are co-creators alongside Member’s Mark product developers and actively shape every aspect of items before they hit the shelves — from voting on new flavors to rigorously pressure testing prototypes in the field. This engagement is paramount to keep a pulse on ever-changing member preferences across diverse demographics and markets. When done authentically and transparently, we believe this can foster more loyal, satisfied members, especially when they can see their fingerprints on the very products they shop for.
Q. How critical is capturing feedback from consumers and how was that being handled prior to the new approach?
Crozier: As we mentioned, Sam’s Club has always sought and listened to the feedback of members. Through the Member’s Mark Community, we now have personalization at scale that provides a unique opportunity to align products with the latest trends and customer preferences. We feel this engagement strategy is the most collaborative and comprehensive way to gather genuine, unfiltered feedback, and we believe it distinguishes us from any other club membership retailer.
