👉 Background: Amazon started back in 1994 as a humble online bookseller, which didn’t make a profit for 14 years — back when being an unprofitable company was not cool. Amazon quietly launched in Australia in 2017 and since then, it has invested more than $20 billion to compete against Australia's online retailers.

‍👉 What happened: But finally, it seems to be paying off for Amazon in Australia as its local revenue jumped nearly 20%. It's major winners were its e-commerce business, which jumped 23% and its cloud computing division, AWS, which jumped 18%.

‍👉 What else: But the winner winner chicken dinner was… Amazon Prime. Its Prime loyalty subscription program jumped 39% over the past year in Australia. Amazon’s loyalty program is the subscription service that just keeps on delivering - literally and financially.

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‍What's the key learning?

💡Loyalty programs do more than just keep your customers loyal — they keep your customers spending. Amazon Prime members spend around $1,000 per year shopping on Amazon, while non-Prime members only spend between $100 and $500.

💡Not only does Amazon Prime generate $480 million in revenue in Australia - its a full-blown customer-spending booster. Throw on top of that, Amazon has a 93% retention rate of Amazon Prime after the first year.

💡That’s why so many other companies have tried to replicate Amazon Prime’s loyalty programs in Australia:

• You’ve got Uber with Uber One
• Wesfarmers with Onepass
• Coles with its Coles Plus
• Kogan with its Kogan First
  

And while it took a while for Amazon to hit its full potential in Australia, you can now see why its starting to squeeze out local e-commerce players.