Costco, the warehouse store known for bulk size products and low priced rotisserie chickens is hoping to give customers more convenience when they shop.
Costco shoppers currently have two ways to shop. They can shop in store at their local warehouse location, or they can shop online.
While online shopping allows the option to have many Costco items shipped directly to the consumer’s door, what if you would rather pick up the item from your local store? It would be quite inconvenient to drive to a warehouse location only to discover that the item you want to purchase is out of stock.
Been there. Done that.
Now, The Daily Mail reports that Costco is testing a new feature that will hopefully make it easier for consumers to know whether or not the items they want are in stock before they drive to the warehouse store near them. This feature is available on the Costco app, but at this time it’s currently in beta test and not available for all Costco members to try out.
If the feature works as intended, it would tell you if it’s in stock at your local store, how many are in stock, and what the price is to buy it at the store versus buying it online.
Sounds great, right?
Some consumers are skeptical though. If you’ve ever shopped at Costco you probably know that it can be difficult to find where items are located, and being a regular shopper doesn’t help since Costco sometimes changes the locations of different items.
An upgrade to the feature they’re beta testing would be to also include the aisle where the item is located.
Finding the item isn’t the only problem. Some consumers don’t think it’s possible for the app’s product count to be accurate. On X, one person who does inventory for warehouses claims that the in-store count is never even completely accurate, so it’s hard to believe the online count could be accurate.
Regardless, if the item is sold out by the time a consumer arrives at the store, they could at least grab a rotisserie chicken and put that membership to use.
Speaking of membership, over the summer, Costco announced that they are increasing the price of membership for the first time in 7 years. The price of a standard membership has increased by $5, becoming $70, and the price of an executive membership has increased by $10 to become $130.
Do you think this new feature will be accurate? Do you think it will be helpful for Costco shoppers?
