Gamers have an incentive to become an Amazon Prime customer

oh oh –I have discovered the goldmine that is Amazon.

Being from South Africa, I have used Amazon in the past, however there were always three issues. The first  was that not all items were “ship-able to South Africa” which therefore meant that I had to come up with round-about ways to get items (such as shipping them to hotels when friends were travelling to the US). The second issue was the even those items that were shipped to South Africa, usually had such ridiculous shipping fees that it negated any savings the product had in the first place. Finally, the third issue was the most of the packages would magically disappear and get “lost in the system”  and never arrive.

But now in the US things are different. I place a order via the website or the Amazon app and two days later it arrives on my doorstep or in the mailbox. How could this get better ? You sign up for Amazon Prime.

For $99 per year, you get free 2 day shipping. You can watch unlimited  TV shows and videos streamed to your phone, tablet or laptop, have unlimited access to millions of music tracks, unlimited photo storage, early access to deals before they are open to the public, oh and since Amazon was THE original book store, you also get 800 000 free eBooks.

If these are not reasons enough to sign up, there is now a new sweetener too – 20% off new physical video games. This can be during pre-order phase and right up to two weeks after the game is released.

Therefore if you order a game such as The Division for the PlayStation 4 at $60, with Prime you get free shipping and 20% off that price.  The game incentive of %20 seems to be directly aimed at Best Buys Gamers Club which offers customers 20% off their games when they sign up for $30 for a 2 year Gamers-club.

As the retailers compete for our attention (i.e. money), they have to come up with incentives to keep us coming back to them rather then the competition. Amazon Prime is Amazon’s hook that offers a lot of value-add services for only $99. However, Amazon realised that Prime shoppers tend to spend more than non-Prime customers as the thinking is that the money saved on shipping can now be spend on more items.

more info on the 20% offer is available here