LAS VEGAS — Sam’s Club is preparing to open a location next week that will be the first in the chain to require shoppers to pay using its Scan & Go smartphone app, the company’s top executive said Monday.
The store, in the Dallas suburb of Grapevine, Texas, will not have checkout counters and will use some of the extra space to show off products that are only available online, Sam’s Club President and CEO Chris Nicholas said during a keynote session at Groceryshop on Monday.
The Walmart-owned membership retailer decided not to equip the location with checkout counters after concluding that its shoppers are highly receptive to technology that allows them to shop more quickly and engage digitally when visiting its physical stores, regardless of their income group or age, Nicholas said.
“We made a decision that we would think about technology different, and we would put technology in service of people, so be people-led, tech-powered versus trying to take technology and fit it into all of our operations for its own sake,” Nicholas said. “And so we got really excited about some of the problems that members are asking us to solve, and right at the heart of that was, ‘Please take friction out of my life.’”
The location will span 151,000 square feet and occupy the same space as a former location in the chain that closed after being damaged by a tornado two years ago, a Walmart spokesperson said in an email. CNBC earlier reported about Sam’s Club’s decision to open the checkout counterless location.
The Grapevine store will open next week on Oct. 17, Nicholas said in an Omni Talk interview at the conference.
During the keynote session, Nicholas added that Sam’s Club believes that making it easier for people to get in and out of its stores is fundamentally changing the way people think about shopping at a club retailer. Rather than primarily visiting Sam’s Club to buy large quantities of goods, people are increasingly interested in stopping in to pick up a few items, he said.
“This idea that the club channel is somehow just big and bulky and you just stock up is a thing in the past,” Nicholas said. “The biggest use case for Sam’s Club today is the top-up shop.”
In addition to offering Scan & Go as a way to speed up shopping, Sam’s Club uses computer vision equipment at store exits to automate the process of verifying that shoppers have paid for the items they walk out with. Those time-saving innovations have helped Sam’s Club position itself as more than just a warehouse club, he said.
Chainwide, about 30% of Sam’s Club’s customers use Scan & Go regularly when visiting the company’s stores and half of its customers are digitally engaged, Nicholas added.
Shopping at Sam’s Club “actually feels much more like a grocery trip that then is augmented with really good quality [general merchandise] and really good quality treasure hunt items that we hope you buy because you're passing them as you shop,” he said.
Jordan Berke, a former Walmart executive who is now CEO of Tomorrow Retail Consulting, said Sam’s Club’s decision to experiment with a checkout counterless store could help strengthen its bonds with shoppers.
“That mobile checkout experience isn’t just to remove friction at checkout,” Berke said. “It’s to create inspiration as the member walks the club. What Sam’s Club is doing so well is adding value digitally to every member who’s using the app when she’s in-store.”
Catherine Douglas Moran contributed reporting to this story.
