Costco Credits Digital Personalization Tools With $470 Million in E-Commerce Sales

Costco's bet on digital personalization produced a concrete return in its second fiscal quarter of 2026: personalized product recommendation carousels on the retailer's website drove more than $470 million in e-commerce sales, EVP and CFO Gary Millerchip said in prepared remarks on the company's Q2 2026 earnings call.

"The enhancements we are making to deliver a more personalized digital experience for our members are starting to create measurable impacts," Millerchip said. "In Q2, our personalized product recommendation carousels drove over $470 million of e-commerce sales, and our newly modernized product display pages are driving incremental sales on our dot-com site as well as increased traffic to our same-day sites."

The $470 million figure landed against a broader backdrop of digital acceleration. Site traffic in the quarter rose 32% and app traffic climbed 45%, according to the prepared remarks. Categories including pharmacy, gold and jewelry, toys, tires, small electrics, special events, and housewares all posted double-digit year-over-year sales growth. Same-day delivery through Instacart, Uber Eats, and DoorDash grew faster than Costco's overall digital sales, Millerchip noted.

The results came as Costco reported net sales up 9.1% to $68.2 billion for the quarter, with U.S. comparable store sales rising 5.9%. Membership reached 82.1 million, a 4.8% increase year over year, reflecting continued strength in the warehouse club's core subscription business.

Millerchip's prepared remarks also referenced a forward-looking digital roadmap, though the full text of that passage was not made available in the portions disclosed. The comment signals that the recommendation carousel rollout is not a one-time initiative but part of a structured, ongoing investment in Costco's digital infrastructure.

The $470 million attribution is notable for what it reveals about the mechanics of Costco's e-commerce strategy. Rather than broad marketing campaigns, the company is pointing to on-site product discovery tools, specifically the algorithmic carousels that surface relevant items to logged-in members, as a direct sales driver. That precision in measurement suggests Costco is applying a more rigorous analytics framework to its digital operations than it has historically brought to its famously spare, low-frills retail model.