Consistently great quality + deals.
Right now they're selling a Costco-sized box of 1,500 Legos for $40.
Man, you can't just put information like this out there. I can't be trusted with this knowledge.
Based on observing Prime members I feel most people would be much better off without the subscription.
I hate paying for shipping and most of the time the items in my cart are < $25 at which point I ask myself if I really need this item. If I really need it, I go to the target/Wal-Mart near my place since they always price match. Not renewing my prime membership has been by very liberating!
Amazon $119, 5% cash back on Amazon CC, Prime Now has minimums, includes Whole Foods, has music and video included. Video is $108 by itself.
Walmart Grocery $98. (their CC is a 1 year bonus, not forever)
Costco $60-120 (120 price gets you 2% yearly cash back.)
Target Shipt $99, 5% back on Redcard, free Debit Redcard is all thats needed for free standard shipping, shipt is for same day like Now.
At the moment upgrading from 2day/nextday to same day costs around $100/year.
Netflix is in the content delivery business, for now. Hence they have to charge full price. If, and when their business model changes to become advertisement driven, you will see changes in the prices charged to end users.
Instead, I can think "oh hey I need to get a shoe horn, the heels on the uppers of the slip-ons I wear to church are getting funky" or "ah crap, I forgot to stop and get a new belt on the way home and this one is getting pretty loose on the last notch and I don't think this synthetic material is going to be happy if I punch a new hole" or "instead of driving to 6 stores hoping to find filters for my air purifier, I can buy 2 on Amazon right here on the toilet and be good for the next 2 years" and "my xlear nasal spray is about empty here at work and this heat is really drying my nose out, I'll just order another now instead of waiting until I go to the grocery Saturday" and "I need another USB C cable, this one is starting to get pretty stressed, I'll order one on Amazon instead of driving miles out of my way to go to Walmart or Best Buy hoping they have one".
Those are this week's purchases. All things I needed, all things I would have had to buy somewhere, all things I got a 1$ credit for which I will use towards eBooks I would have purchased either way.
Or last week when I ordered a tofu press, I have no idea where to buy a tofu press in the real world but wasting gobs of paper towels and using books just wasn't doing it for me.
It's not like I opened Amazon in a moment of boredom and said "let's see what I should waste money on today".
Related, I went to buy a shoe stretcher on Amazon. Had to buy 3 before I got one that wasn't complete garbage.
I'd have gone to someplace local but none of the local places have much inventory for quality goods anymore either...
For me Amazon is still a net win in regards to convenience, but there are a lot of things I just won't buy.
Heck for a little while earlier this year the official Sonicare page was somehow taken over by people selling knock-off replacement heads, all the links from the manufacturers verified page went to obviously fraudulent misspelled products.
Yeah for me it's mostly books (digital and physical), Amazon basics stuff and stuff I can't get anywhere locally (that I know of) like a tofu press or hard to counterfeit stuff like my televisions/an iPad Air 2/my reconditioned vitamix.
Besides, I don't think I've ever re-read an eBook. If I think I'll refer to something again I buy it in print.
The membership fees almost pay for themselves just in preventing me from going into the store and impulse buying something on a shelf once a month.
As far as Amazon Prime, I have to believe the price of shipping is built into the products, and the membership is for other psychological and behavior control reasons.
Is part of this social network price the same thing. A cost to make it exclusive, acts as a bit of a spam filter. Then after having sunk money into it, you feel the need to make it worthwhile. I never think "ive been watching too much prime I better get my value out of netflix this month" but a communication tool might be different.