Sam's Club Evolves Sampling Program

While staging traditional sampling programs remains a challenge, Sam’s Club is developing alternative ways to spotlight food and beverage demonstrations in stores during the ongoing pandemic.The warehouse club has shifted its Tastes and Tips in-store sampling program from doling out food and beverage samples to spotlighting weekly featured digital demo items from national brands. Enjoying secondary merchandising space, updated demo stations in stores give brand marketers space to highlight brand creative and, in some cases, merchandise more product. Communicating a “Sample. Solve. Save” message, the stations have also been updated to invite shoppers to "check out this week’s featured digital demo item" and depict QR codes linking to an account-specific Tastes and Tips landing page (within samsclubfoods.com) featuring a video demo starring Sam’s Club’s Tastes and Tips employees.In January, the Path to Purchase Institute spotted a number of the COVID-19-safe Taste and Tips demo stations in stores, including one for Kraft Heinz’s Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. The video demo corresponding with the brand’s in-store station shows a Tastes and Tips employee referencing the Kraft 18-pack available at Sam’s Club and boasting the brand’s SKUs are free of artificial flavors, dyes and preservatives. A “learn more” button below the video takes mobile users to the product’s detail page within the Sam’s Club mobile app.Also in stores, TV screens are used to promote and demo product. In a Sam's Club store in West Jordan, UT, the Institute spotted a TV atop a pallet display merchandising Lieutenant Blender's Cocktails in a Bag items. The TV played tiki bar-themed video tutorials using the cocktail mixes, which just require alcohol and water as shelf trays pointed out.In addition, as Sam’s Club has continued making several changes to its online order pickup experience (after it quickly expanded the service to all clubs at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic), the retailer recently added a sampling program to the service for brand marketers seeking to get on shopping lists.Sam’s Club has also partnered with Chicago-based retail innovation company Freeosk to offer CPG manufacturers an automated method for sampling in stores since 2013.

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