Be honest: How many times, when your monthly budget just wasn’t going to last to cover all your meals, have you considered popping by a local grocery store to snag a few free samples to hold you over? At Costco, some shoppers even plan ahead for of the practice, visiting on days and times that they know the choices of free samples will be diverse, plentiful, and filling.

These giveaways, though occasional at many grocery stores, are a distinctive marker at Costco and one of the features that sets it apart. But that competitive strategy might not be as effective any more, as growing numbers of retail grocers are upping their sampling game as well. Perhaps most notably, Walmart announced that it would be sharing small portions of a wide variety of consumer goods, from novel product introductions by big name brands like Oreos to new offerings from niche brands hoping to make people aware of their names and offerings.

For the retailers, the tactic provides a range of benefits, with relatively little cost. That is, the store needs to set aside some square footage, and perhaps staff the table, but the brand generally donates the giveaways. One small grocery store chain cut those costs even further, by installing vending machines that take care of the task of dispensing the samples. Customers can review the offerings in the machine and choose which items they want to try (for free). Assuming the samples are appealing, they create the promise to draw more customers to the store, and customers who take a sample are more likely to buy as well, which should contribute to store revenues.

Obviously, brand manufacturers like the idea too. Mondelez, which owns the Oreo brand, has offered up orange-crème–filled cookies at various Walmart stores. It might be hoping to cash in on seasonal purchases, but it also can use the sampling to conduct detailed analyses of customer behaviors. Do they find the orange fun and appealing, or do people need to overcome resistance before they try it? How do they respond once they have tasted the sweet treat? How many buy it that day; after the promotion ends, how many people return to the store to purchase the promoted product? All these insights are invaluable for brands and their marketing strategies.

It might be easy to convince shoppers to try an Oreo, but for small, relatively unknown brands, in-store sampling also offers an effective introductory tool. Dude Wipes, a personal care brand targeting men, thus handed out individual packets of sample products in Target stores, in the hope of convincing its target customers that the products would benefit them, as well as to install the brand’s name into their memories.

 

Discussion Questions

1. What kinds of product lines are most effective to include as free samples? Why?
2. As a consumer, do you accept free samples or not? How often has doing so driven you to purchase the product?  

 

Sources: Alex Bitter, “Costco-Style Free Samples Are Popping Up at Walmart and Other Stores as Brands Try to Get You to Buy Their Stuff,” Business Insider, October 16, 2023; Spencer Soper, Brendan Case, and Caelyn Pender, “Brands Hand Out Freebies as Online Ads Lose Appeal,” Bloomberg, October 16, 2023