Amazon Sets Huge Holiday Shopping Record With 4 Million Prime Trials In One Week, Record Echo And Fire TV Sales
Another holiday season has come and gone, though not before Amazon, the world's biggest online retailer, hit a new shopping record. That seems par for course these days, which itself is pretty remarkable. The holiday season was also a boon for Amazon's Prime membership program. More than 4 million started a Prime trial or paid membership in just one hectic week of holiday shopping.
The massive influx of Prime memberships (trial and paid combined) during the past week is proof positive that free two-day shipping on millions of qualifying items continues to be a major draw, though far from the only one. Prime membership has many perks these days, from unlimited streaming of Amazon's catalogs of movies and songs, to endless photo storage (and 5GB for videos and documents).
Prime or otherwise, shoppers flocked to Amazon during the holiday period and ordered more than one billion items from small businesses and entrepreneurs, 140 million of which were ordered during the five-day period from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday,
It was a particularly good season for Amazon's devices. Its Echo Dot and Fire TV Stick topped the sales chart, and not just among Amazon devices but from any manufacturer in any category across all of Amazon. Interestingly, customers purchased twice as many Fire TV sticks than last year's holiday season, underscoring the growing interest in streaming content (and perhaps cutting the cord).
"Since Day One we have obsessed over what we believe our customers care about—incredible deals and low prices, fast and free shipping, and a wide selection of top products—and we continue to provide all three, all the time. We’re excited that people continued to join Prime this holiday, to take advantage of more fast and free shipping options plus new convenient delivery like Amazon Key, as well as early access to Lightning Deals and unlimited streaming of TV shows and movies, including Prime Originals and more," stated Jeff Wilke, CEO Worldwide Consumer. “Thank you to the millions of customers and hundreds of thousands of Amazon employees all around the world who made this holiday better than ever before. We look forward to another great year ahead."
Voice shopping seems to be gaining traction, too. According to Amazon, millions of Prime members voiced shopped with Alexa for gifts, Amazon devices, and everyday household items. The Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick, and TP-Link Smart Plug Mini were the most ordered items via voice.
Of course, what holiday would be complete with a bit of boozing and schmoozing? Helping with the former (and perhaps leading to the latter), Alexa assisted with mixing tens of thousands of cocktails, with users getting into the holiday spirit most often with a Martini or Manhattan, the top two requested drinks.
Some other fun facts:
- The recipe for chocolate chip cookies was the most requested recipe this holiday season.
- The most requested song from Alexa customers this holiday season was “Jingle Bells.”
- The East Coast was more in the holiday spirit this season, asking Alexa to play holiday music 2.5x as many times as the West Coast.
- Alexa customers turned on their holiday lights more than a million times via Alexa this holiday season.
- Alexa customers asked for tens of millions of jokes this holiday season.
- The most common person people called this holiday season was 'Mom' in the U.S. and Germany, and 'Dad' in the U.K.
- Music listening time on Alexa was 3x as much this holiday season compared to last holiday season.
- Customers wished Alexa a Merry Christmas, Happy holidays and Happy Hanukkah 3.5x more this year when compared to last year's holiday season.
- People asked about Santa 4x as much this holiday season compared to last holiday season.
- Customers asked Alexa for cooking related advice more than 9x as much this year compared to last holiday season.
There are a whole bunch of other fun facts to digest. If you have a few minutes to spare, hit the source link to see them all.
