Amazon, known for its dominance of the e-Commerce market, has even more reasons to be thrilled about the holiday season just past. In the third week of December alone, the e-Commerce giant gained three million new subscribers to its Amazon Prime shipping service.
The Amazon Prime service, which offers free two-day shipping for orders on the majority of items sold, now has “tens of millions” of subscribers worldwide, according to a company statement.
Amazon has made quite the effort to promote and expand its Prime offering in 2015, in what can be considered a banner year for the company. On July 15, the retailer launched its first Prime Day sale, which surpassed 2014 Black Friday orders by 18% despite criticism for its limited offerings. Even prior investor concerns regarding profitability have been answered, with the retailer turning a profit for two straight quarters.
Advertisement
The success of Amazon in 2015 has created a pattern that Chinese counterpart Alibaba and other potential competitors can only hope to emulate. Alibaba has had plenty of success in its own right, particularly the growing popularity of Singles Day, but investors have not been as positive about the direction of the company.
While Alibaba’s stock is down more than 22% from Dec. 30, 2014, the arrow for Amazon is pointing in the opposite direction. In the same time period, Amazon’s stock has actually increased 121%.
Amazon Further Builds Mobile Influence
It appears Amazon is capturing more of a mobile audience as well, with the retailer highlighting three trends from the holiday season:
-
The number of Prime members in the U.S. shopping via a mobile device has more than doubled;
-
Nearly 70% of Amazon.com customers shopped using a mobile device this holiday season; and
-
Amazon.com customers shopping on the mobile app have more than doubled.
With these statistics in mind, Amazon should continue its focus on both its mobile site and mobile app as it approaches 2016, and integrate new mobile-only deals into the Prime service.
“This was another great holiday season to be a Prime member,” said Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon in a statement. “More than 200 million more items shipped for free with Prime this holiday, and members doubled their viewing hours of Prime Video compared to last year.”
