Jriya Palanachsuk
Southern New Hampshire University
July8, 2012
Competition among the North American Warehouse Clubs: Costco Wholesale versus Sam’s club versus BJ’s Wholesale
Case Summary According to the case, in the year 2010, the nearly $ 125 billion discount warehouse and wholesale club segment of the North American retailing industry concluded of the tree major competitors, which are Costco wholesale, Sam’s Club (both of them belongs to Walmart) and BJ’s Wholesale Club. The three warehouse clubs operated no- frills, self service big box facilities where customers could choose from relatively narrow assortment of discount – priced merchandise across a wide range of product categories. The example products are food, household supplies, electronics, office supplies, books, clothes, DVDs, and so on (Arthur A, T 2010). The strategy of these retail stores is that the stores offer discounted or low prices to the customer. This strategy has helped the company attract customers’ attention. As we know people are looking for a good product and low price always. The way that these stores do in order to reduce its cost are as the following; Costco, Sam’s Club and BJ’s Wholesale can get the lower operating costs than another retailer stores because they buy full truckloads of merchandise directly from producers, they showed item on inexpensive shelving, they tried to keep extra inventory in high shelving, the most important thing is that they had very low labor cost if compared with the other competitors. The reason is that the warehouse not opens long hours than the other retailer store does so that there are a few numbers of people working there). Moreover, Costco, Sam’s Club and BJ’s wholesale do not focus much on IMC ( Integrate marketing channel ) In this case, it talks about investing in advertising and
customer service. Thus, those