Services

Amazon Prime Membership Same as 4 Largest State Populations Combined

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Buried in Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos’s annual shareholders letter, well after his descriptions of the company’s quality awards and the business principle, was the fact that the count of its Prime membership program has reached 100 million.

That is as large as the populations of America’s four largest states combined, among other measurements.

California has a population of 38 million, followed by Texas at 26 million, Florida at 20 million and New York at more than 19 million. The figure is also larger than America’s 14 largest cities as measured by population: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Washington, Miami, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Boston, Phoenix, San Francisco, Riverside and Detroit.

Prime is growing much faster than either these states or cities. The comparison to Prime will become more and more impressive as more states and cities are added to the lists.

The Prime count is also about the same as the populations of the Philippines and Ethiopia, each of which is at around 102 million. They are the 12th and 13th most populated nations in the world. Down the list, Egypt’s population is 96 million, and Vietnam’s is 95 million. Germany’s is 82 million, and it is the largest country in Europe by that count. Prime has as many members as the populations of Spain and Canada combined.

What does Prime get Amazon, other than $99 a year (in the United States) from each member? Bezos wrote:

13 years post-launch, we have exceeded 100 million paid Prime members globally. In 2017 Amazon shipped more than five billion items with Prime worldwide, and more new members joined Prime than in any previous year – both worldwide and in the U.S. Members in the U.S. now receive unlimited free two-day shipping on over 100 million different items.

That revenue is larger than the gross domestic product of many states.

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