Sam's Club stocked familiar snack brands — and members asked what their fee was for

Sam's Club sells a filter as much as a warehouse. Chinese members pay for access to a limited assortment that promises quality, value and products they cannot find in an ordinary supermarket. In July 2025, that promise became the subject of a backlash after members complained that favored products had disappeared while new items came from familiar mass-market snack brands.

The disputed assortment included a Sam's-exclusive reduced-sugar Orion Choco Pie and products from brands such as Weilong and Liuliumei. Some members argued that familiar supermarket names did not demonstrate the value of a paid membership, even when the recipes or packages were exclusive to Sam's.

The reaction was not a clean verdict on product quality. China Business Journal reported that the Choco Pie had a 93.7% positive rating across more than 9,000 reviews in the Sam's app, while social-media criticism remained loud. It also found misleading posts that mixed products never sold by Sam's into lists of supposed delistings.

Sam's said it had noticed the discussion and would include members' views in future assortment strategy. The disputed Choco Pie and a Weilong mushroom konjac product later could not be found in the mini-program. The mistake was letting assortment logic become invisible: an exclusive recipe still looked ordinary when the brand name was available everywhere.

Sam's relied on exclusive recipes, but members judged by brand familiarity, so the filter looked invisible; the disputed Choco Pie and Weilong product later vanished.

Sam's relied on exclusive recipes to create differentiation, while members judged differentiation first by the familiarity of the brand

Removing favored products and adding recognizable supermarket names made two assortment decisions feel like one decline in curation

The company explained its selection principles only after members questioned whether the annual fee still bought a meaningful filter

App ratings and social-media criticism pointed in opposite directions, so listening only to either channel would misread the customer base

A membership retailer must make its filter visible. A product can be exclusive by recipe and still look ordinary if members cannot see why it earned scarce shelf space.