It’s been a while since Amazon introduced Prime Student, a special version of its annual membership made for college students. Prime Student offers all of the benefits of Amazon Prime at half the cost. For $49.99 per year, college students have access to free shipping for their online orders made through Amazon and also get to use numerous Amazon’s services and benefit from special deals. The online retailer is so certain in the quality of its service that it’s actually offering a six-month trial period with no strings attached. All students enrolled in at least one college or university class in the United States can take advantage of this program and benefit from free two-day shipping, unlimited streaming of music and video, as well as a simple referral program.
The idea behind Prime Student is actually rather simple – introduce your service to potential customers at a young age and keep them supplied with enough promotions, discounts, and benefits to make them loyal for life. A discounted sale is still much better than no sale and no one knows that better than the largest online retailer in the world. The success of Prime Student has recently been so noticeable that Melanie Shreffler from the market research company Cassandra has just asserted that Amazon is basically parenting students during their college days. As Shreffler told Bloomberg earlier today, Amazon is making sure that students “have what they need during this transition [period].” Of course, she’s referring to clothes, groceries, and pretty much everything else you may require during your college days.
In fact, Prime Student has been so well-accepted among college kids that Amazon is currently expanding the number of its college campus kiosks where students can pick up their deliveries faster than it’s expanding its bookstores. The company is currently planning to serve over half a million students across the US by the end of the year and will be ramping up its expansion efforts in the following years, as well. Given the fact that Prime itself is already a pretty big advantage Amazon has over its competitors, it’s to be expected that the growing popularity of Prime Student will just further solidify the company’s position as the number one online retailer in the world.
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