Amazon Prime × Pickup

In the UK, more than 90% of young Prime members (under 24) were eligible to use Amazon Pickup, yet only 2.3% of deliveries used it. That made the UK a useful market to test whether a small incentive could change delivery behaviour.

Pickup offered a clear opportunity to reduce shipping costs. We wanted to understand whether a simple financial incentive could encourage young Prime members to try it, without negatively affecting their Prime subscription experience.

We gave a selected group of young Prime members £1 off orders of £5+ when they chose an Amazon Pickup point for delivery.

200,000+ customers were included in a 20% treatment group, while the remaining eligible customers acted as the comparison group. This allowed us to measure whether the incentive actually changed behaviour.

Customers already familiar with Pickup responded more strongly: fourth-time Pickup orders increased by about 4% and fifth-time orders by about 5%. The experiment also drove an estimated 2,600 incremental Amazon purchasers, generating $22.40 in incremental sales for every $1 invested.

The main learning was simple: £1 appeared too small to convince new users to change their delivery habits, but it was enough to encourage customers who already used Pickup.

That led to three recommendations for the next iteration:

1. 01

   Offer a larger incentive to first-time users

2. 02

   Test in markets where Pickup was already more established

3. 03

   Improve visibility through channels such as push notifications