TIL Desk/Business/Washington/ Amazon has persuaded more than 100 million shoppers to subscribe to its Prime service that offers free two-day shipping and other perks that help bind people to the company and its ever-expanding empire.
CEO Jeff Bezos quantified the size of Amazon’s Prime membership for the first time Wednesday in his annual letter to the Seattle company’s shareholders. Before Bezos’ revelation, analysts had been left to guess how many people had been willing to pay $99 per year for the Prime service, which Amazon launched 13 years ago as a way to foster customer loyalty.
The scope of Prime’s success stunned even the most optimistic of analysts, such as GBH Insights’ Daniel Ives. He had previously estimated Amazon had 92 million Prime subscribers.”It’s a mind-boggling number that serves as a key barometer to how big Amazon’s kingdom has become,” Ives said.
