Amazon is offering a discount on Prime membership, the New York Times writes, “to the millions of recipients of Medicaid, the public health insurance program for low-income Americans. They can receive the benefits of Prime — including free fast shipping and video streaming — for $5.99 a month, less than half the standard monthly fee of $12.99. The move expands an effort started last year, when Amazon started offering the Prime discount to people with electronic benefit transfer cards, used to distribute aid for food purchases.”
The discount is available to adult Medicaid recipients, who number in the neighborhood of 35 million people.
The goal, the story points out, is to continue trying to attract low-income people who traditionally have been Walmart shoppers; low-income shoppers traditionally have been less loyal to Amazon than other demographics.
The discount is available to adult Medicaid recipients, who number in the neighborhood of 35 million people.
The goal, the story points out, is to continue trying to attract low-income people who traditionally have been Walmart shoppers; low-income shoppers traditionally have been less loyal to Amazon than other demographics.
- KC's View:
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This probably won’t be all that easy; I suspect that low-income folks still would rather head down to Walmart, simply because it will be hard to convince them that Amazon has lower prices. Plus, if you have limited resources, even coming up with an extra six bucks a month isn’t always the easiest thing. you have to make choices.
That said, Amazon is pressing every lever it can, knowing that some will work and some won’t. It is like the lottery ad - you can’t win if you don’t play.
