About 10 million new members tried Amazon's (AMZN) Prime service for the first time, this holiday season, leading to yet another record holiday period for the e-commerce giant.
The company disclosed the astounding number in its annual post-Christmas debriefing session, where Amazon talked about its plan of expanding its one-hour delivery service, mobile-based shopping and the popularity of its Fire TV.
The Popular Prime Membership
The Prime service charges customers a membership fee of $99 per annum and grants members the benefit of guaranteed two-day shipping. This could have been one of the reasons why the service attracted millions of first time members doing some last-minute shopping for their loved ones for Christmas.
Amazon customers can try out the Prime service absolutely free as part of a 30-day trial before deciding on whether they wish to continue the subscription.
The Prime service is not the only thing that Amazon emphasized on. The company went on to discuss additional perks of being a Prime member such as Kindle users having access to e-book and video rentals. The Amazon Now delivery service that debuted in Manhattan recently and gets products to the consumer in just one hour was also discussed.
Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, talked about further improving the Prime Now service and expanding it to additional cities in 2015. However, he did not specify the cities.
According to the company, compared to last year’s holiday season, clients ordered over 10 times as many products with Amazon Now.
Surge in Mobile Shopping, AmazonSmile Broadens
Amazon also spoke about the significance of mobile-based shopping to the company as approximately 60% of the company's clientele shopped on Amazon via a mobile device. Cyber Monday was the peak day for mobile shopping on Amazon.
There were 16 times more Amazon customers who shopped on smile.amazon.com compared to the holiday season last year. AmazonSmile lets users select a charity to receive 0.5% of the price of their eligible purchases and has similar products and prices as Amazon's regular site.
Fire TV Makes a Mark
Amazon disclosed that the most wished-for items on the website included Amazon's own Fire TV Stick, Fire HD 7 and Fire HD 6. Amazon Fire TV was the best-selling streaming media box, with the Fire TV Stick becoming the fastest-selling device by Amazon to date.
Amazon currently has a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell). Better-ranked stocks in this industry include Geeknet, Inc. (GKNT), Mercadolibre, Inc. (MELI) and Stamps.com Inc. (STMP). While Stamps.com sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), Mercadolibre and Geeknet carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).
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