Memberships are not a specific type of WooCommerce product; instead, membership plans are created independently from products. This lets you determine how access is granted for maximum flexibility. You can assign 0 or more products (of almost any type) to a membership plan to support several types of memberships:

• sell a membership as stand-alone product — create a product for the membership, then tie the plan to that product to sell it
• grant access to a membership as part of a product purchase — i.e., buy a subscription for a meal box, get access to the recipes section for free
• grant access to the same membership from several products (i.e., a yearly purchase or a monthly subscription)
• assign memberships manually for an invite-only members area