A Third of Prime Members Buy From Amazon at Least Once a Week

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 5:52PM EST · Published Nov 13, 9:37AM EST

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A Third of Prime Members Buy From Amazon at Least Once a Week — © courtesy of Amazon.com Inc.

Outsiders have questioned whether Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) makes much money from its Prime membership service. Maybe Amazon underprices its benefits, or gives away too many services for free. A new survey shines light on the potential power of Prime. One third of its members buy something from Amazon at least once a week

According to Feedvisor’s Amazon User Study 2016:

● Amazon uses aren’t exclusive: 61 percent of Amazon users have also made a purchase on a brand or retailer’s site, such as Walmart.com or Gap.com, in the last year.
● Prime members shop Amazon more often: About a third of Prime members make purchases on Amazon at LEAST once per week, compared to 5 percent of non-Prime members.
● Shipping costs are a deterrent to sales: More than 85 percent of customers consider shipping charges to be a deal-breaker.
● Amazon users consider third-party sellers to be reliable: Nearly 80 percent of Prime and 60 percent of non-Prime members have purchased from third-party sellers.

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Prime costs users $10.99 a month. At the same time, it costs Amazon a great deal. Amazon has gone into highly expensive in-house exclusive programming to compete with Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX). It offers unlimited photo storage, free, unlimited use of Audible, two million free songs, and a massive library of streaming video.

If the Feedvisor data is accurate, Prime may be among the best ideas Amazon has ever had.

Methodology: The study was conducted by Feedvisor, the algorithmic repricing and revenue intelligence company. It surveyed more than 1,500 U.S. Amazon users and showed how they rely on the online marketplace for price and product information during their shopping journeys.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.