Amazon Announces Record Breaking Holiday Season

 Amazon has announced that this holiday season was record-breaking thanks to its customers all around the world – billions of items were ordered worldwide and tens of millions of Amazon Devices were purchased worldwide. Throughout the season, Amazon offered customers incredible deals every day and deeper discounts and more Deals of the Day than ever before during shopping events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Some of the best-selling products and brands this holiday season were the Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote, Echo Show 5, L.O.L. Surprise! Glitter Globe Doll Winter Disco Series with Glitter Hair, iRobot Roomba 675 Robot Vacuum, HAUS LABORATORIES, Carhartt, AmazonBasics, and Champion items. Popular departments customers shopped in Amazon’s Stores in the U.S. were toys, fashion, home and beauty with more than half a billion total items ordered.

“This holiday season has been better than ever thanks to our customers and employees all around the world,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. “On behalf of all Amazonians, we wish everyone the happiest of holidays and a fantastic 2020.”

Amazon’s worldwide and U.S.-only seasonal and year-end highlights are as follows. 

Amazon Employees

• This holiday season Amazon added more than 250,000 full and part-time seasonal roles across its global customer fulfillment network, with the company now employing 750,000 employees worldwide.
• Nearly 19,000 employees worldwide across Amazon’s Operations team were promoted this year.
• Amazon has 150 delivery stations in the United States that employ more than 90,000 Amazon Logistics associates.

Small and Medium-Sized Businesses

• It was a record-breaking holiday season for independent third-party sellers – mostly small and medium-sized businesses – with worldwide unit sales seeing double-digit year-over-year growth, surpassing a billion items sold in Amazon’s Stores.
• There are more than 800 Amazon Delivery Service Partners in the last-mile network, employing 75,000 drivers in the U.S.
• Hundreds of thousands of customers in the U.S. visited the Small Business Gift Guide this holiday season, which featured gifts exclusively sold by small businesses.

PRIME MEMBERS, Shipping & Delivery

• More people tried Prime this holiday season than any previous year – in fact, in one week alone, more than 5 million new customers started Prime free trials or began paid memberships worldwide. 
• In 2019, Amazon’s dedicated last-mile delivery network delivered over 3.5 billion customer packages globally.
• This holiday season, the number of items that were delivered with Prime Free One-Day and Prime Free Same-Day Delivery nearly quadrupled compared to the same time period last holiday season, making this Amazon’s fastest holiday yet.
• Over 100 million items sold by independent third-party sellers – mostly small and medium-sized businesses – were shipped with Prime Free One-Day Delivery over the holidays in the U.S.
• In the U.S., the Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick 4K, Echo Show 5, Echo Auto, and Amazon Smart Plug were among the most popular items shipped with Prime Free One-Day Delivery during the holidays. Other popular items shipped with One-Day Delivery this holiday season include Melissa & Doug Scratch Art, and the Wyze Cam Indoor Wireless Smart Home Camera.
• Millions more items were ordered to an Amazon Hub location during the holiday season than ever before.
• 60 percent more customers shipped their holiday order to an Amazon pickup point this season compared to last year.
• The top ten cities that used an Amazon Locker or Amazon Counter location this holiday were Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, Portland, San Jose, Berkeley (CA), Austin and Columbus.
• The last delivery with Amazon’s ultra-fast delivery arrived on Christmas Eve at 11:59pm PT in Seattle, WA.

Amazon Devices & services

• It was a record holiday season for Amazon Devices and Alexa – customers worldwide purchased tens of millions of Amazon Devices.
• Shoppers purchased millions more Amazon Devices compared to last holiday and the best-selling devices worldwide included Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote and Echo Show 5.
• Customers interacted with Alexa at record levels this holiday season – from finding recipes, to showing who’s at the front door, finding holiday TV shows and movies, turning on holiday lights and more.
• Customers asked Alexa for recipes and cooking advice tens of millions of times this holiday season as Alexa helped make holiday feasts, cookies and cocktails. Some of the most popular recipes this holiday season included Thanksgiving Turkey, Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Fluffy Mashed Potatoes.
• Customers received hundreds of millions of doorbell and motion announcements via Alexa this holiday season from carolers to delivery drivers and holiday guests.
• The most searched for holiday movie on Fire TV with Alexa was Home Alone, followed by Elf and The Grinch.
• Alexa helped turn on holiday lights tens of millions of times.
• Alexa helped customers connect with family and friends near and far tens of millions of times this holiday season, through video calling, messaging, and drop-in.

Source : Amazon

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