Prime Impact: Exclusive Survey Results
Is Amazon your go-to source for online shopping?
You're not alone.
Millions shop on Amazon every single day looking for everything from books to beauty products.
Amazon Prime, the company's $119/year membership program which offers free two-day shipping and now boasts more than 100 million members, seems to be a key driver of their growth.
Bigger is Better
At Prime Mailboxes (no relation to Amazon Prime), we've noticed an increase in customer demand for larger mailboxes. We're finding that consumers are looking for plus-sized mailboxes capable of fitting multiple small packages.
The USPS confirms this trend with their data showing that their package deliveries have increased 26% over just the past 2 years and 54% since 2013.
The Amazon Effect?
We were curious to find out how much of an impact Amazon might be having on the increase in package deliveries and the demand for larger mailboxes. Clearly more Americans are ordering products online as ecommerce has become a primary mode of shopping for many consumers, but has Amazon Prime impacted or even been a catalyst for this trend?
We surveyed more 1,500 people to find out.
Exclusive Survey Results
Our survey results found for the first time that more than half of US households now have an Amazon Prime member. While we expected this number to be high, we didn't realize that it would reach 51.7%.
This shows that Amazon has significant market penetration and provides some context for the rapid growth of package deliveries in the US.
Next we broke down the data to look at Amazon Prime popularity by state.
The top 5 states with the highest percentage of Amazon Prime households were Mississippi, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Maine, and South Dakota. The 5 states with the lowest percentage of households with an Amazon Prime member were Wyoming, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Arkansas, Utah.
We were curious to find out how many Amazon package deliveries the average US household receives each month.
The above results found that almost 2/3 of households receive at least one Amazon package deliver a month. About 25% receive 3-6 packages/month and nearly 18% receive five or more Amazon deliveries on a monthly basis.
Not surprisingly, households with Amazon Prime members receive significantly more deliveries than do those without Prime membership. Nearly 30% of Amazon Prime member households receive five or more packages per month, compared with just 5% of non-Prime members.
Free two-day shipping is clearly a big incentive for Amazon Prime members as more than 90% report receiving more than one package per month.
Conclusion
The survey results clearly show that Amazon is a force to be reckoned with in ecommerce, now boasting more than half of the country as Prime households. Prime members seem to be Amazon's best customers as they order significantly more Amazon packages than non-members.
While we don't have historical context, it seems logical to assume that Amazon and Prime have had a significant impact on the increase in US package deliveries.
Methodology
We conducted our research using Google Surveys. The survey ran from 9/26 to 9/28 and we received responses from 1,500 individuals. You can download our survey response data here.
Bonus Questions
We also asked two follow up questions. The first was to gage usage of Amazon Prime Video.
Amazon added Prime Video as an additional benefit of the membership service to entice more subscribers to sign up and has invested heavily on original content. Just under 2/3 of Prime members have tried it out.
Finally, we were curious to know what the weirdest product our respondents had ordered through Amazon. We received many interesting responses and it wasn't easy to narrow the list down to 10, but the list above shows our personal favorites.
