BJ's Vs. Costco Vs. Sam's Club: Which Wholesaler Is Stepping Up Into 2021?

Heading into 2020, Costco Wholesale Corporation COST was the clear leader of the wholesale club group while Walmart Inc's WMT Sam's Club ranked second and BJs Wholesale Club Holdings Inc BJ ranked a distant third.

Has much changed heading into 2021? Location data analytics startup Placer.ai has the answer.

Growth Into 2020: Costco and Sam's Club enjoyed "consistent growth" throughout 2019 and the momentum continued in the first few months of 2020, according to Placer.ai. Specifically, Costco saw visits increase 3.7% in January and 12.7% in February, while Sam's Club saw increases of 3.5% and 13.5%.

BJ's has shown trends move in the opposite direction. Visits were down 2.6% between 2018 and 2019, while visits were down 2.8% in January. But trends reversed with momentum starting to pick up in February.

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Fast forward to the week of Oct. 19 and BJ's was showing the highest year-over-year growth in weekly visits at 14.8%. Sam's Club ranked second at 5% followed by Costco at 2.2%.

In fact, BJ's showed the highest growth rates from the week of Sept. 28 through Oct. 19.

Costco Remains The King: Costco was the lone chain to show year-over-year declines as weekly visits were down 1.7% for the week of Sept. 28 and down 1.4% for the week of Oct. 5.

However, the company dominated total visits with a 54.5% market share in September versus Sam's Club at 36.5% and BJ's at 9%.

Costco is also benefiting from a 4.7% increase in visit duration from August through Oct. 20, while BJ's saw its durations rise 4.5% and Sam's Club visits were flat, according to Placer.ai.

Photo credit: Mike Mozart, Flickr