The Technology Behind Sam's Club, Walmart's Membership Warehouse Store

While Sam's Club at first glance may seem like a typical warehouse retail membership club, look beyond the pallets of packaged food and tabletops stacked with designer clothing, and you'll see an operation committed to using technology to improve the experience of customers – or members, as they are called – and its own operations. Case in point -- the company introduced the Scan and Go mobile phone app in 2016, allowing customers to avoid the check-out lines by using their mobile phones to scan barcodes themselves and then click a button to check out and pay. The service made shopping more convenient for the members who used it in 2016. But it really stood out as visionary when the pandemic hit in 2020. Scan and Go provided a contactless shopping experience at a time when the guidance on COVID was to "social distance" by staying 6 feet away from anyone else.