Sam’s Club surges past Costco in customer satisfaction

The news: Sam’s Club surged ahead of its competitors to claim the top spot in the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) rankings for general merchandise retailers.

• The retailer earned 85 points on a 100-point scale, marking a 4-point YoY increase.
• The strong performance enabled Sam’s Club to surpass Costco—which shared the top spot last year with Macy’s—as well as retailers including Target and TJX.

The context: The Walmart-owned warehouse club has taken several steps to streamline its shopping experience and tap into consumers’ growing focus on value and willingness to trade down to private-label products.

• To drive adoption of its Scan & Go service—which roughly 1 in 3 shoppers use to skip checkout lines—the retailer offered first-time users a $10 reward.
• Sam’s Club also introduced AI-powered exit arches with built-in cameras at select locations, removing the need for associates to check shoppers’ receipts.

The warehouse club also merged its corporate supply chain team with Walmart’s, allowing it to move faster by leveraging its parent company’s enterprise systems and infrastructure.

Our take: Sam’s Club’s focus on removing friction from the shopping experience is working. Enhanced convenience is encouraging customers to shop more frequently and spend more per visit. This contributed to a 7.2% YoY increase in Q3 sales (excluding fuel), with transactions rising 6.4% over the same period.

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