Yes, Prime Day Builds Prime Membership
Prime Day is here. While Amazon has many goals for its Prime Day promotions, the predominant one remains in its name: the deals are available only to Prime members. Previously, we’ve shown the dramatic growth in Prime membership over the past ten or more years, and the slowdown in growth in the past two or so years.
How critical is Prime Day in driving or retaining Prime members? The data varies, but suggests that overall, Prime Day helps boost Prime membership. The overall data on Prime member shopping proves that some of the shopping habits Prime Day seeks to introduce, like apparel and grocery shopping highlighted in last week’s report, stick with consumers.
Amazon has run eight Prime Day promotions since the 2015 inaugural event. Until that time, new Prime membership sign ups were low in the non-holiday quarters. The December quarter before the first Prime Day was incredible, with Prime membership growing by over 35%, which was about 10 million members at that time. Little Prime growth was expected the following summer, but the first Amazon Prime Day quarter saw 7% membership growth (Chart 1).