Sam’s Club Unveils Interactive Digital Shopping Experience

Need to Know

• Sam’s Club photographed four pop-up spaces in 360 degrees to create four unique, interactive online shopping experiences.
• The digital shopping activation, called Deck the Yard, features curated outdoor spaces from designers Nate Berkus, Becki Owens, Jennifer Houghton, and Jonathan Stiers.
• Shoppers can click on items displayed in each space to see basic product information and can purchase items by clicking a “Shop Now” button, which redirects them to the Sam’s Club website.

Analysis

Sam’s Club has unveiled a new way for shoppers to decorate their outdoor spaces this season, launching a new, interactive, fully shoppable digital experience called Deck the Yard.

To create the digital shopping experience, Sam’s Club commissioned four designers — Nate Berkus, Becki Owens, Jennifer Houghton, and Jonathan Stiers — to curate outdoor spaces using items that are available for purchase from the retailer. The spaces, which were built in Los Angeles, New York, Dallas, and Bentonville, were then photographed in 360 degrees.

Customers can digitally visit and move through the spaces online: arrows on the floor allow the shopper to move forward or backward through the space, and to change the direction they’re facing. The spaces are explorable in 360 degrees; using their cursor, shoppers can view decor items from floor to ceiling.

Each item available for purchase in the Deck the Yard experience is labeled with a black pin, which shoppers can click on to see basic product information, such as size, material, and price. If a shopper wishes to purchase an item, a “Shop Now” button will redirect them to the item’s product page on the Sam’s Club website (product pages open in a new tab, so shoppers can continue to explore the space).

“I think I can speak for all the designers when I say that we really enjoyed dreaming up these spaces and shopping the items available at Sam’s Club to bring our vision to life for you,” Jonathan Stiers, creative director for Member’s Mark, which is the Sam’s Club in-house brand, said in a statement.

Earlier this month, Sam’s Club announced a significant digital milestone, reporting that it is currently leading the field in app downloads. The Sam’s Club app has been downloaded 9.6 million times, about double the amount of downloads for Costco, which is Sam’s Club’s main competitor.

With the launch of Deck the Yard, Sam’s Club joins an increasing number of retailers and brands that are using interactive online experiences to engage customers, as e-commerce has spiked in use due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These include Walmart, which is the parent company of Sam’s Club, which debuted interactive recipe videos in November, and Canadian grocery store McEwan, which partnered with grocery app Inabuggy to launch a virtual grocery store within the app in November of last year. Home goods retailer Bed Bath & Beyond also launched a shoppable nursery design tool, which allows users to decorate and furnish a baby’s room, with its subsidiary BuyBuy Baby in January of this year.