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

Heading into 2020, Costco Wholesale Corporation (NASDAQ: COST) was the clear leader of the wholesale club group while Walmart Inc's (NYSE: WMT) Sam's Club ranked second and BJs Wholesale Club Holdings Inc (NYSE: 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