We Definitely Spoke Too Soon - Amazon Prime Membership Picks Up Again

After years of rapid growth, Amazon Prime membership growth slowed down pre-pandemic. CIRP thought it met its theoretical limit. Over the past year growth picked up again, at least a little. That growth continued in the most recent fiscal quarter.

We started estimating US Amazon Prime membership in 2014 and enjoyed tracking year after year of double-digit growth. Perhaps that skewed our perspective on the current more modest growth. Growth in online shopping in the US is far from over, so we should not be surprised when the biggest player of them all gets its share of that market expansion.

Remember, CIRP estimates of US Amazon Prime membership are the number of individual Amazon shoppers who use Amazon Prime, which is higher than the number of US households that pay for an Amazon Prime membership. 

CIRP estimates 180 million US Amazon customers had a Prime membership as of the March 2024 quarter. That is an increase of about 8% from 167 million US Amazon Prime members in the March 2023 quarter (Chart 1).