If a consumer buys a particular brand while shopping at Sam’s Club, should that sale be attributed prior promotional campaigns, in-store inducements by the retailer, or marketing efforts by the brand in that particular setting?

If the person is shopping online, the answer might be relatively clear. When a browsing shopper clicks on a banner ad on a retailer’s website or app, the sale probably should be attributed to that campaign. But these questions continue to plague marketers when they investigate offline sales. Determining why a particular consumer chose a particular brand on a particular day in a particular store is nearly impossible, without asking that consumer directly and at that moment.

In its efforts to help its suppliers attribute sales of their products more accurately, Sam’s Club has introduced a new tool that links consumers’ online and app behaviors with their in-store purchases, then makes those data available to brands that are members of its Member Access Platform (MAP). In real-time, the tool can determine if a consumer searched for, say, pickles or paper towels or plastic containers through the Sam’s Club’s website or app. If that same consumer then purchases pickles or paper towels or plastic containers, the MAP makes that link immediately clear, so the brands that earned the purchase know which marketing communication likely drove the consumer to buy. To support these efforts, the retailer’s app features links that allow consumers to click on advertisements and place the promoted items into their carts, whether to purchase digitally or as a reminder for when they get to the physical store.

According to the head of sales for the MAP program, approximately half of all Sam’s Club shoppers who visit its app already search for specific items and products they want to buy, so these insights encompass and provide insights into a lot of consumers. Brands in turn can leverage the detailed, data-supported insights to develop more tailored, specific, and successful advertising campaigns, because the MAP data show them whether consumers purchased through the app but also whether they followed their search on the app with a purchase in the store. According to Sam’s Club, the capabilities provided by MAP already have increased advertisers’ returns on ad spending (ROAS) by 30 percent.

A key benefit of this tool is that it does not require a loyalty card, which is the method many retailers use to gather such data insights. But not all consumers want to join a loyalty program or remember to present their loyalty cards for every purchase. Because Sam’s Club is a membership-based retailer, it already knows who the consumers are at the moment they begin to shop.

Of course, Sam’s Club is not limiting its data power to benefiting brand partners. It also has added video capabilities to its existing in-store cleaning robots to track inventory levels and the status of its displays. With these real-time insights, it ensures that the shelves are consistently well stocked, attractive, and appropriately presented. Shoppers therefore enjoy a more pleasurable consumer experience in stores, because they can find what they want and need easily. Such strategies still benefit manufacturers though, because they put their products in front of consumers, rather than running the risk of unidentified stockouts on shelves that fail to get replenished in time.

Discussion Questions:

1. As a membership-based retailer, Sam’s Club can identify shoppers immediately when they enter stores. How might other, non–membership-based retailers learn shoppers identity, if they want to adopt a similar data system?
2. How might Sam’s Club combine its inventory data with purchase data to gain even more insights into shoppers’ behaviors and preferences?

Sources: Peyton Begora, “Sam’s Club Bridges Online and In-Store Data Gap,” Marketing Dive, March 23 26, 2023; Judy Mottl, “Sam’s Club Leveraging Data to Boost Customer Shopping Experience,” Retail Customer Experience, July 11, 2023; Sam’s Club, “Sam’s Club Member Access Panel (MAP) Pioneers True Closed-Loop, Omnichannel Attribution for Advertising,” March 21, 2023; Sam’s Club, “Sam’s Club Member Access Panel Demonstrates Significant Return on Ad Spend for Omnichannel Campaigns,” July 18, 2023