Amazon issued an after-Christmas press release – as always, it talked a lot about its services but was shy on details. Regarding third-party merchants and small businesses, Amazon revealed the following:
“Customers shopped from hundreds of millions of products, including a vast selection from small businesses and entrepreneurs. More than one billion items were ordered from small businesses and entrepreneurs worldwide this season – and over just five days, from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, nearly 140 million items were ordered from small businesses and entrepreneurs.”
Amazon said 2017 was its biggest holiday season with customers all around the world shopping at record levels. Prime membership continued to grow – “in fact, in one week alone, more than four million people started Prime free trials or began paid memberships, to benefit from free two-day, one-day or same-day shipping, in addition to ultra-fast one and two hour delivery with Prime Now.”
In 2017, Amazon increased the size of its fulfillment and shipping network by more than 30% in square footage worldwide. Its peak day of customer fulfillment was December 19, 2017.
Some other points of interest from the press release:
This holiday, millions of Prime members voice shopped with Alexa for gifts, Amazon devices and everyday household essentials. The most popular items purchased by voice were the Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote and TP-Link Smart Plug Mini.
Across North America and the Europe, associates at 10 fulfillment centers picked, packed, and shipped more than one million customer packages in a single day.
In the U.S., more than 6,000 trailers and 32 Amazon Air planes helped get holiday orders to customers this season.
Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Amazon Air carried enough packages to equal over a billion Echo Dots.
Customers worldwide shopping on the Amazon App increased nearly 70% this holiday season. And more than 1,400 electronics products were ordered per second on a mobile device this holiday season.
Prime members shopped more than 100,000 Lightning Deals on Amazon.com with Prime Early Access.
Customers shopped hundreds of Deals of the Day on Amazon.com throughout the holiday season.
You can view the full press release on Amazon’s press release website. Here’s a link to the Amazon Canada press release. And here’s a link to the Amazon UK press release. (Note: The UK press release appears to be identical to the US press release at the time of publishing this post.)
