Survey: 30% of Prime members order from Amazon every week

And even when they're shopping on other sites, 70% of Prime members check Amazon's prices before buying elsewhere.

Matt McGee on November 11, 2016 at 11:02 am

Jeramey Lende / Shutterstock.com

Amazon Prime members are wrapped around the e-commerce giant’s proverbial finger. New data from Feedvisor, an e-commerce platform that works with Amazon’s third-party sellers, shines a light on how committed Prime members are to online shopping — mainly on Amazon.com, but also on other e-commerce sites.

Feedvisor surveyed more than 1,500 US-based Amazon shoppers this past summer — about half of whom identified as Prime members — for its Amazon User Study 2016.

The company found that 30 percent of Prime members said they order something from Amazon at least once a week. Only about 5 percent of non-Prime Amazon shoppers admitted to making weekly purchases. Stretch out the time frame to monthly, and 81 percent of Prime members place an order, compared to only 35 percent of non-Prime members.

When they’re not shopping on Amazon.com, the survey respondents mainly make their e-commerce buys from brand and retailer websites — 61 percent said they’ve ordered in the last year from sites like Walmart.com or Gap.com. Another 33 percent of Amazon shoppers said they’ve made a purchase from eBay in the past 12 months. Only 3 percent said they’ve bought from Jet.com in the past year; that’s the well-funded startup that launched last year and was bought by Walmart this past August.

Even when they’re shopping on other sites, Amazon customers are highly likely to make sure there’s not a better deal on Amazon.com. About 70 percent of Prime members said they “often” or “always” check Amazon’s prices before buying elsewhere, compared to about 56 percent of non-Prime members.

Some other Prime-related data from the Feedvisor survey:

• 75 percent of Prime members say they visit Amazon.com at least once a week; 57 percent visit at least twice a week, and 18 percent visit every day.
• 73 percent of Prime members say they trust packages shipped by Amazon more than packages shipped by a third-party seller.
• 50 percent of Prime members shop online (at any website) at least once a week.
• 78 percent of Prime members say they’ve bought from third-party sellers on Amazon.com.
• 31 percent of Prime members report an income of at least $100,000, compared to 16 percent of non-Prime members.

Amazon doesn’t reveal how many of its customers are Prime members, but Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) just estimated last month that there are 65 million in the US alone, who spend an average of $1,200 per year with Amazon — double what non-Prime customers spend.