When you walk into a Sam’s Club on a Saturday morning, you will witness the same routine at every register: a member using the Scan & Go app to scan items, avoiding the line, and believing that the fifteen dollars a month is already worth it. The entire business model revolves around that sense of receiving something in return for the membership fee. The rest is commentary.
Therefore, it’s important to pay attention if Walmart decides to alter the way that emotion is created. The company announced on August 20 that starting in 2027, Sam’s Club will use Scintilla, its internal commerce intelligence platform. It’s not an eye-catching announcement. There isn’t a new store layout or an eye-catching advertising campaign. However, it may prove to be more significant than the majority of what Sam’s Club actually stocks.
Scintilla isn’t particularly new. It originated from a platform called Luminate, which Walmart introduced in 2021 and subtly changed its name to in 2025. Walmart’s suppliers have had to deal with it for many years. Sam’s Club suppliers and merchants are now integrated into a single system that displays member behavior, online and in-store performance, and business outcomes in one location rather than each person squinting at separate reports.
The chief merchant of Sam’s Club, Myron Frazier, put it this way: “Everything starts with the member and understanding what they need, what they love, and what they’re looking for next.” There’s something plausible about this statement, even though it could be said by any retail executive. This seems more like a continuation of Sam’s Club’s long-standing strategy to out-tech Costco than a new one.
It’s difficult to ignore the extent to which convenience, rather than curation, has shaped Sam’s Club’s identity. Costco relies heavily on its Kirkland Signature brand and a carefully curated selection that verges on treasure hunting. In contrast, Sam’s Club made an early wager on Scan & Go, and it paid off. According to CNBC, Costco is still catching up on frictionless checkout. Scintilla appears to be the next phase of the same approach: rather than focusing solely on assortment, compete on customer knowledge and responsiveness.
This also has a practical twist. The current MADRID data system used by Sam’s Club won’t change immediately; it will remain in place until Scintilla launches. However, the 2027 runway is long enough that anyone interested should probably start making plans now instead of waiting for a deadline to appear out of the blue.
The Sam’s Club version of Scintilla’s access levels and price have not yet been disclosed, which is precisely the kind of information that gets lost in a press release and then becomes a pain eighteen months later.
The real question is whether improved data truly improves the member experience or if it primarily gives Walmart more negotiating power over its suppliers. It is possible for both to be true simultaneously. Retailers have frequently claimed that “we’re doing this for the customer” while covertly using the same strategies to pressure suppliers into giving them better terms.
The two businesses have been trading blows on membership fees, private labels, and now technology for decades, and Costco isn’t standing still either. The annual cost of Sam’s Club’s basic membership is sixty dollars, which is slightly less than Costco’s sixty-five. Each dollar of that cost is contingent upon members feeling they are receiving something in return.
It won’t be clear until 2027 whether Scintilla does that or just makes the backend run more smoothly.
