Amazon Keeps Raising the Bar on Shipping

Along with price, product selection and availability, shipping remains critical to Amazon’s retail business. It is critical to Amazon shoppers, and it is where all of Amazon’s challenges and opportunities converge. Amazon has poured billions of dollars into getting shipping and delivery right, rewriting the rules for customer expectations. CIRP has data on delivery timing dating back more than ten years. This week we assess changes to Amazon’s delivery promise over the past five years, from right before the Covid pandemic to the past 12 months.

In the most recent twelve-month period ending in March 2025, well over half of US Amazon customers (61%) were offered and selected two day or faster shipping (Chart 1). This is only slightly greater than the 59% in the twelve months period ending in March 2020. Still, there is a major change within that two-day segment.