Costco Prototype Research
Roles: UX researcher / UI designer
The Client :
Costco is a multinational corporation known for its chain of membership only warehouse clubs around the world. These clubs allow members to shop for goods in bulk at discounted prices. In 2019, Costco already has 98.5 million members in its loyalty program. Many customers rave about shopping at this discount giant.
The Problem:
Costco invites customers to become members, and in turn Costco invest in a positive shopping experience. We want to explore how to continue this investment, and build additional means of generating loyalty both in and outside of Costco.
Opportunity Statement:
While Costco members enjoy the in-store experience, people don’t understand the value of the current Costco app.
To combat this, we are looking to align the Costco app functionality to compliment the beloved in-store experience. This will win over current customers by saving them time, increasing revenue via turnover in store, and retaining customer loyalty.
Research Stage
Research Methods:
During this stage of the project we wanted to gather enough data to see what Costco customers really felt were important elements of their Costco Loyalty program and shopping experience. We also wanted a strong understanding of the competitive landscape for Costco’s Loyalty program and mobile app experience.
Indirect Research
Competitive review
Costco mobile app reviews in app store
Direct Research
Customer Interviews
Participatory research (optimal card sort)
In-store shopper follow alongs
Key Insights:
Loyalty programs generate mixed-to-poor results; there are stronger drivers of brand loyalty than programs.
Most members are happy with their membership.
In-store experiences over-burden new members and visitors.
Store traffic and layout frustrate routine members.
Prototype
During the prototype phase we took the insights from our research to decide on a set of features that best represented the needs of our users. We decided on three features to save the customer time and help them to avoid the pain points when it comes to the in store shopping experience. The features we decided on were: product browsing, shopping list generations, and in-app purchases.
Feature # 1
Product Browsing
Users lamented the Costco app’s cumbersome browsing experience. While we’re not reinventing the grid, we would like to explore components that compliment traditional product browsing for faster, easier product selection.
Feature #2
Time saving wish lists
A common theme in mobile app reviews is using the lists to help the user save time by pre-populating based on previous behavior, input, and purchases in-store.
Lists can populate based on time since last purchase or by the user simply choosing to pre-populate last month’s list.
Selected lists will appear in the user’s cart to allow for in-app purchasing while physical in store or to be picked up at a later time.
Feature #3
In-app Purchases
Customers stated that waiting in long lines was one of the least enjoyable parts of their Costco experience. With in-app purchases users will be able to buy their goods from their phone which allows them to avoid a major pain point for Costco shoppers. This will allow customers to save time and for Costco to save resources.
The users would find the scan product tab located in the drop down menu. The scan product tab will send them to a barcode scanning screen. Users can scan the barcode on items they wish to add to their virtual cart.
After scanning the user will be sent to their virtual cart with a list of items in their cart. From here they can proceed to check out in the app. Once done they will receive a digital receipt to present on their way out of the store.
Next Steps
After researching and creating our prototypes based on the new features, our next steps will be to continue user testing and reiterating our prototype. We will also begin testing information architecture to get a better understanding of how we can incorporate these new features into the existing Costco app. Finally, we will roll out the new app features and measure impact on customer experience when shopping at Costco.