Most Americans subscribe to a membership service with a mass retailer, such as Amazon Prime, Costco, Sam’s Club or Walmart+.
Amazon Prime leads the way. An estimated 166 million U.S. consumers are Amazon Prime members, according to “The Benefits Of Membership,” a PYMNTS report based on a survey of 2,129 U.S. consumers.
Get the report: The Benefits Of Membership
The number of Amazon Prime members is more than double that of each of three other mass merchant memberships. These include Costco, which has 73 million members, Sam’s Club, which has 69 million, and Walmart+, which has 38 million.
The share of consumers who buy items from these merchants in store versus online varies across the mass retailers.
Unsurprisingly, 98% of Amazon Prime shoppers conduct their transactions online. Amazon originally made its name as an online-only retailer, and the vast majority of its customers’ transactions reflect this.
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While Amazon does have some brick-and-mortar locations, only 3% of its members have shopped in-store.
Costco, Walmart+ and Sam’s Club shoppers, on the other hand, are far more likely to shop in person, with 88%, 85% and 84%, respectively, shopping in-store.
However, for these three mass merchants, a good share of their customers use both purchasing channels — online and in-store. Thirty-seven percent of Walmart shoppers, 28% of Sam’s Club customers and 18% of Costco members say they have made purchases online.
Membership services appeal to consumers for a host of reasons. Consumers can use them to access exclusive deals.
As the market has become saturated, however, these retailers have seen their numbers plateau, and shopping subscriptions dropped slightly over the past year.
These and other findings suggest that most consumers do not want to sign up for every service — they just want to pick one or two that deliver the features and values that resonate with them.
