BENTONVILLE, Ark. — Sam’s Club is reporting that its dynamic member engagement and feedback community has reached over 150,000 participants nationwide, a threefold increase in just two years. The Member’s Mark Community gives members the ability to trial, test, taste, and recommend hundreds of exclusive Member’s Mark products, Sam’s Club’s private brand, and are now doing so on a scale that sets Sam’s Club apart from its peer competitors and other retailers.
The rapid growth of the Member’s Mark Community comes as Sam’s Club has identified a shift from transactional to relational engagements with consumers who are increasingly signaling to companies that they want to be known and cared for in a meaningful way, who increasingly want to be more actively engaged with brands, who are digitally-native, and want to shop how they want and when they want. The rapid growth in scale of the Community is a defining proof point of Sam’s Club’s preeminent role in what is known as participation retail.
“Today’s consumers are increasingly seeking value – not just in good prices and the right products – but also from relationships with brands where they feel their input is valued and even rewarded with offerings that meet their wants and needs,” said Jonah Berger, marketing professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, focused on influence, change and consumer behavior. “When consumers see themselves and retailers as partners, they move beyond simple transactions to more enduring engagement.” Sam’s Club said its existing Member’s Mark Community was already co-creating with the retailer at scale, a defining proof point of its status as a major force in participation retail.
Established in 2019, the opt-in, member-driven community reemerged at scale in June 2024 with 50,000 participants. Just two years later, membership has tripled, with 15,000 highly engaged members participating in five or more activities per month. In the app, participants can view their community profile and activity history, receive push notifications for invites and announcements, and participate in testing, voting, and other interactive activities.
The community’s preferences and rigorous feedback were instrumental in Sam’s Club reaching its initial ‘Made Without’ milestone earlier this year. This years-long effort set a new private brand standard for the industry by removing more than 40 unwanted ingredients, including certified synthetic colors, from 100% of Member’s Mark food and beverage products without compromising on taste, quality, or value.
“Membership is about more than access and savings. It's about giving members a voice and it brings to life our belief that the best version of the Club is not something we create for our members, it is, importantly, something we create with our members,” said Myron Frazier, Chief Merchant for Sam's Club. “Sam’s Club is already co-creating with our members at scale, proof that collaborative relationships with consumers are not only possible, but possible in a way that distinguishes us in retail. Our members are helping us build better products, strengthening the Member's Mark brand, and helping to shape the modern membership experience Sam's Club has become – for our members and our associates.”
Now open to all members, the Member’s Mark Community provides feedback, ideas, and recommendations throughout the development lifecycle of most Member’s Mark products. To date, members have completed almost half a million activities, from quick polls on exclusive flavors to hands-on prototype testing with the most engaged members residing in Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, and California. This includes favorites like the Member’s Mark Ultra-Filtered Milk Shakes, where select participants were shipped bottles to gauge taste, texture, and supplemental nutritional value against market benchmarks.
“That made me feel really important knowing that my voice was being heard,” shared a community member who helped craft the high- protein shakes. “It is wonderful to take a survey or test a product and go into the store and actually see it on the shelves and know that my opinion mattered to get that product there,” another community member recently shared.
“The past few years have seen brands operate in the so-called experience economy, engaging customers in memorable, personal and emotional ways. Often, leading brands leveraged technology to differentiate and modernize – brands like Sam’s Club – driving improved customer satisfaction and engagement outcomes. The next evolution is a shift towards active collaboration and co-creation, tightening the engagement with participant relationships built to endure for the long term – delivering value not only to the consumer but the brand’s strength as well,” said R “Ray” Wang, founder and principal analyst with Constellation Research. “Those brands that can do both – engage more deeply in participant relationships and power those engagements with AI-powered innovation – will define leadership going forward.”
Throughout the rest of the year, Sam’s Club is planning even deeper engagement opportunities for the community around the country. This includes listening sessions and Member’s Mark live events, where local participants get behind-the-scenes access to upcoming products, opportunities to taste the latest food and beverage creations, and trying on the hottest seasonal apparel.
Sam’s Club hosted the first of these events in Grapevine, Texas, in February. More than 200 local members were invited to preview the spring collection of men’s and women’s Member’s Mark attire, sharing their real-time feedback on everything from fabric to fit to functionality.
