Non-Prime Members Must Order Early for Christmas
With the holiday shopping season heating up, customers receive almost a billion packages from Amazon. Most want them in time for Christmas! As we look at the shipping choices of US Amazon customers, beyond free vs. paid, we also analyze how fast customers get their deliveries. As we saw in last week’s report, Prime members and non-Prime shoppers both primarily do not pay for shipping, Prime members also take full advantage of their speedier shipping options.
Shipping benefits remain the principal motivator for joining Amazon Prime - both free and faster shipping. Last week we found Prime customers get free shipping about 95% of the time and almost two-thirds of non-Prime member orders also ship for free. So free shipping may not be the differentiator. The difference is shipping speed.
70% of Prime member orders have shipping speeds of two days or faster, with almost one-quarter same day or one-day shipping (Chart 1). The 30% of Amazon Prime orders with longer shipping times are primarily products that don’t qualify for fast shipping, generally from Amazon Third Party sellers that don’t participate in Prime.