Amazon Prime subscriptions ramp up in the US
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Michelle Clancy
| 09 July 2017

Amazon Prime membership has reached 85 million members in the United States, according to number-crunching from*Consumer Intelligence Research Partners*(CIRP).

That number translates into about 63% of all domestic customers on the site deciding to subscribe to Prime. Amazon offers Prime Video*and free two-day shipping for $99 per year; there’s also an option to pay a $10.99 monthly fee for Prime instead—an option taken by 28% of that 63%.

The figure represents a 35% growth on the prior year’s quarter and double the membership from 2015.

Amazon Prime members end up spending more with the site, on average, than regular customers, too: The firm found that members spend an average of $1,300 per year on the site compared to $700 for non-members.

“Amazon Prime membership encourages much more frequent shopping, likely because the free shipping benefit knocks down a key barrier to buying online often and makes Amazon their first stop for online purchases,” noted Mike Levin, co-founder of CIRP.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said last year that the company’s goal “is to make sure that if you are not a Prime member, you are being irresponsible.”

Amazon doesn’t publicly disclose the official number of Prime members.

The Consumer Intelligence Research Partners* analysis comes as Digital TV Research noted that the US and Canadian pay-TV markets are set for serious headwinds.

In its North America Pay-TV Forecasts report, the analyst said that the number of pay-TV subs in North America will fall by 10 million by 2022. That’s down from 112 million pay-TV had in the peak year of 2012, a 9% decline. Though it says that this is evidence of a massive cord-cutting problem in itself, there will also be a steep rise in the number of non-pay homes during this period. These are expected to hit 41.56 million by 2022, nearly double the amount over the same research period.

The total number of TV households will increase by 11 million meaning that pay-TV penetration will drop from the peak of 87.4% in 2013 to 75.2% by 2022.