Roughly 45% of U.S. consumers, as of October, live in a household that has a membership to Amazon Prime, according to a new estimate from Cowen & Co. investment bankers.
Cowen bases its estimates on a monthly survey of 2,500 U.S. consumers. It says the 45% equates to 49.5 million Prime subscribers—most of whom pay $99 annually to Amazon.com Inc. to be a Prime member. Cowen says about 40 million U.S. consumers were Prime members in October 2015.
Cowen’s estimate is more conservative than a recent estimate from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP), which said Amazon had 65 million Prime members at the end of September.
