Costco
Membership warehouse retailer selling bulk goods online and in-store.
Available information varies by company and source.
Profile record updated:
Company facts
- Official name
- Costco Wholesale Corporation
- Entity type
- COMPANY
- Founded
- 1983
- Headquarters
- United States
- Company size
- >5,000
- Market role
- Retailer & Marketplace
- Ticker
- COST
- Official website
- costco.com
What Costco does
Costco runs a membership-based retail model. Customers pay annual fees for access to warehouses and online shopping, and Costco uses that recurring income to support a low-markup merchandising strategy designed to drive volume, renewal and loyalty. Value is created through scale purchasing, limited assortment, private-label penetration, efficient inventory turns, and cross-selling of member-only ancillary services. The business is structurally retail-led, with membership economics strengthening retention and margin resilience.
Category differentiation
Costco is a membership warehouse retailer and e-commerce operator, not a retail media platform or a software vendor. Its core business is selling goods and memberships directly to consumers and small businesses.
Strategic context
AI-supported assessment from the existing company research; distinguish interpretation from sourced facts.
Costco Wholesale Corporation is a public multinational membership warehouse retailer that sells merchandise through physical warehouses and e-commerce sites. Its core model combines annual paid memberships with high-volume, low-margin retailing across categories such as groceries, electronics, home goods, business supplies and ancillary services. The company also extends member value through service offerings including insurance, travel, payment processing and other negotiated benefits. Costco generates most revenue from merchandise sales, while membership fees provide recurring income and underpin customer retention, pricing discipline and operating profitability. Its direct customers are households and small businesses that pay for access to member pricing and warehouse or online purchasing. The company operates at global scale, with 914 warehouses worldwide as of August 2025 and active expansion supported by digital traffic growth and continued warehouse openings.
Company news briefing
Briefing updated:
Costco continues to expand its omnichannel capabilities globally and domestically, highlighted by its appointment of JD.com as its exclusive e-commerce partner in China and the scaling of its U.S. grocery delivery partnership with Uber Eats to 47 states. Furthermore, industry evaluations underscore the company's distinct, hand-built retail media network stack within the evolving commerce media landscape.
Business model & monetisation
Costco monetises through a hybrid of recurring membership fees, low-margin merchandise sales in warehouses and online, commissions or service fees from ancillary member services, and margin contribution from private-label products such as Kirkland Signature. Pricing is designed to maximise renewal, basket size and purchase frequency rather than extract high gross margins per item.
- Merchandise sales in warehouses
- Retail Margin
- E-commerce merchandise sales
- Retail Margin
- Annual membership fees
- Content Subscription
- Ancillary member services
- Service Fee
- Private-label product contribution
- Retail Margin
Products & capabilities
No products with linked sources are available in this view.
Products & market categories
Competitors & alternatives
- E-mart
South Korean omnichannel retailer with loyalty, marketplace and private-label assets.
- Sam's Club
Membership warehouse retailer with e-commerce, subscriptions and retail media.
Side-by-side comparisons
Recent recorded signals
Dates refer to the source publication. Older entries are historical context, not evidence of a new event.
Costco and Uber Expand Grocery Delivery to 47 States
Retail Media · Recorded impact score: 2/5
Costco and Uber have expanded their U.S. grocery delivery partnership on Uber Eats from 17 to 47 states, making nearly 600 Costco warehouses available for delivery to Costco members. The expansion, announced on September 16, 2026, requires Uber Eats shoppers to verify their Costco membership before purchasing. As part of the deal, some Costco members receive discounts on Uber One subscriptions, and customers can purchase Costco memberships through the Uber Eats app. This move intensifies competition in the grocery delivery space, where Uber Eats faces rivals like Instacart, DoorDash, Amazon Fresh, and Walmart, which recently launched its own restaurant delivery service with partners like Subway and Dunkin'.
- Costco and Uber expanded their U.S. Uber Eats delivery partnership from 17 to 47 states.
- Nearly 600 Costco locations are now available for delivery on Uber Eats for Costco members.
Why good retailers make bad ad tech decisions
Retail Media · Recorded impact score: 2/5
This article from The Drum, written by commerce media columnist Kiri Masters, explores the organizational and financial challenges that hinder retailers from adopting new adtech, despite the availability of advanced technology. It describes the gap between technology capabilities and an organization's ability to approve and implement it, using the example of a retail media leader who manually adjusts an inadequate ad server to compensate for poor forecasting. The article outlines four eras of retail media: in-house builds, economic pendulum swings, cloud/composable architectures, and AI-era data requirements. It contrasts different RMN strategies, such as Costco's hand-built stack and Ace Hardware's use of CitrusAd, highlighting that tech choices often reflect historical timing rather than current needs. It discusses the 'budget clock' and 'career clock' that constrain decisions, and concludes with expert insights on proposition-led strategies versus technology-led ones, noting the trend of advertiser consolidation on major DSPs.
- Citing a retail media leader, the article states that a mid-sized US network uses an ad server built for legacy publishers, which fails to forecast retailer traffic patterns, leading to underdelivery.
- The article says that the retail media leader manually adjusts the platform's forecasts every week or two to avoid missing seven-figure ad revenue.
Costco names JD.com exclusive China e‑commerce partner
Retail Media · Recorded impact score: 3/5
Costco has appointed JD.com as its exclusive e-commerce partner in China and opened an official flagship store on the platform. A May pilot currently offers about 700 SKUs across food, household, beauty and supplements, and recorded strong early interest (over 30 million visitors and ~200,000 followers in the first month). The partnership leverages JD.com's logistics for same‑day delivery in many cities and nationwide coverage, allows non‑members to shop Costco assortments online, and both companies plan to expand the collaboration into more categories, supply‑chain optimization and joint customer/membership initiatives.
- Costco named JD.com its exclusive e‑commerce partner in China.
- Costco launched an official flagship store on JD.com in a May pilot with around 700 products.
Pratt Industries Scales Sales Using ZoomInfo Data
B2B Data & Sales Intelligence · Recorded impact score: 2/5
ZoomInfo reported that Pratt Industries, the world’s largest privately owned manufacturer of 100% recycled paper packaging, modernized its field-sales prospecting with ZoomInfo’s verified contact data and buying signals. Pratt combined its traditional door‑to‑door sales motion with ZoomInfo to identify decision-makers, reach verified direct lines, and act on buying signals. According to the company, this approach produced deals worth hundreds of thousands of dollars over ten months and generated several million dollars annually for certain opportunities, particularly in digital printing. The story is a Business Wire press release republished by MarTech Series on July 20, 2026.
- ZoomInfo reported Pratt Industries closed deals worth hundreds of thousands of dollars over 10 months after modernizing prospecting.
- ZoomInfo reported Pratt Industries generated several million dollars annually from certain accounts after using ZoomInfo to identify buyers and bring packaging spend back to the U.S.
Eric Ries on Building an Incorruptible Company
Corporate governance and AI-assisted authorship · Recorded impact score: 2/5
Eric Ries discusses his new movement and book Incorruptible in a podcast interview focused on corporate governance and using AI to write. He outlines governance tools founders can adopt—public benefit corporation charters, mission guardians or mission-lock vehicles, and long-term trusts—illustrating the ideas with Costco’s governance and Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust. Ries also details his AI-enabled writing workflow: the book was produced inside Answer.AI’s Solve It platform with structured notes, prompts, and code, and he demonstrated live screenshares using Claude. The piece frames these governance and workflow approaches as relevant for product managers, founders, and teams aiming to preserve long-term missions while maintaining high iteration velocity.
- Eric Ries wrote the book Incorruptible using the Solve It AI platform from Answer.AI and demonstrated his workflow with Claude.
- The newsletter recommends corporate governance tools including converting to a Public Benefit Corporation and designating a mission guardian or mission-lock vehicle.
Explore company relationships
Questions about Costco
What is Costco?
Costco is a public membership warehouse retailer that sells merchandise through physical warehouses and e-commerce sites.
Who uses Costco?
Households, value-focused consumers and small businesses use Costco for bulk purchasing, discounted goods and member-only services.
How does Costco make money?
Costco makes money from merchandise sales, annual membership fees, ancillary service commissions and private-label product margins.
Sources & coverage
This profile uses public, official and technically observable information. Missing information does not prove that a product or relationship does not exist. The list below does not imply that every profile statement has been verified.
20 publicly documented primary sources and citations linked across the market graph.
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