Dive Brief:
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An analyst who has been tracking and estimating the size of Amazon’s Prime membership now says he believes there may be 50 million Amazon Prime members worldwide.
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Mark S. Mahaney of Canadian investment bank RBC Capital Markets previously estimated U.S. Prime membership at between 10 million and 20 million, and worldwide Prime membership 20 million to 30 million. But his latest research leads him to believe there may be between 30 million and 40 million in the U.S., and 40 million to 50 million worldwide.
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That is significant because it’s estimated that Prime members spend two to three times more at Amazon than non-Prime members.
Dive Insight:
Well, wow. If Mahaney is right, the handwringing about Amazon’s recent Prime membership fee increase was probably a bit misguided — there’s clearly quite a large demand for its perks. Also, if it's true, that membership fee boost from $79 to $99 each year will garner the company quite a bit of extra cash. Mahaney is one of the best sources for these estimates. Until Amazon itself starts releasing its Prime numbers, though, the topic isn’t really much more than a beguiling guessing game.