iStock.com/jmoor17
By Tom Ryan
Source: retailwire.com, October 2024
Sam’s Club will open a digital-only club later this month with no checkout lanes. Customers will scan QR codes and pay with the Scan & Go app, then walk out without a cashier’s assistance.
According to a report from CNBC, shoppers also won’t need to wait in line for an associate to check their paper receipts. Instead, AI-powered technology — supported by an array of cameras and rolled out earlier this year — handles verification. The Walmart-owned warehouse club told Business Insider in late April that more than half of customers at locations where the technology had been deployed were using the option to pay and go, helping shoppers exit the door 23% faster.
Peter Keith, senior research analyst at Piper Sandler, told CNBC that Scan & Go “really eliminates the most painful part of these membership clubs, which is the long lines to check out.”
The new club will open in mid-October in the Dallas area.
Technology, including investments in building out e-commerce, continues to be a key differentiator for Sam’s Club against its main rival, Costco, which is twice as productive as Sam’s Club. Costco only began introducing self-checkout stations over the last two years.
The Dallas location will serve as a testing ground for in-store innovations. Beyond the elimination of cashiers, the store features four times more space for preparing customers’ e-commerce orders for curbside pickup or home delivery as well as a pizza robot able to make up to 100 pizzas an hour.
In areas usually reserved for checkouts, the store will feature online-only items, such as a 12-foot Christmas tree or sectional for the living room. Members will scan QR codes to gain information and purchase the items for delivery.
“It’s kind of the physical manifestation of a journey we’re trying to go on as a company,” Sam’s Club CEO Chris Nicholas told CNBC. “The idea is that over time, we will be 100% digital engagement as a business, and you’ve got to prove that things work before you scale them.”
Nicholas acknowledged that with only one in three members currently using Scan & Go, the all-digital store’s test will explore further acceptance of the technology.
The test comes after Amazon in April announced plans to remove its “Just Walk Out” technology — which allows customers to shop and leave the store without going to a register — from Amazon Fresh stores, replacing it with its Dash Cart smart shopping cart device.
At the time, Amazon said feedback showed customers preferred the smart shopping cart. In a statement from April, Amazon said that while customers “enjoyed the benefit of skipping the checkout line with Just Walk Out, they also wanted the ability to easily find nearby products and deals, view their receipt as they shop, and know how much money they saved while shopping throughout the store.”
Amazon has also been closing several Amazon Go convenience stores featuring cashierless technology but indicated that it remains committed to building out the technology with third-party merchants. In early September, Amazon announced that the Just Wak Out tech was expanding to more sports stadiums and universities.
Some retailers, including Walmart, Kroger, and Dollar General, have experimented with self-checkout-only stores, but other stores have been removing self-checkout stations or limiting the number of items that can be purchased at self-checkout lanes reportedly due to high shrinkage.Wegmans in 2022 announced that it was discontinuing the use of its self-checkout app due to high shoplifting rates, although Sam’s Club’s exit verification technology may solve those issues
