[Statista] Amazon's Escalating Logistics Costs

 

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Amazon's Escalating Logistics Costs

by Felix Richter, Feb 7, 2022

 

When Amazon reported its latest quarterly earnings last week, the company also announced a price increase for Prime membership in the United States. The monthly fee for the popular members program will be raised from $12.99 to $14.99, while the annual membership will go from $119 to $139. Over the past few years, Amazon has added more and more perks for Prime members, including fast and free shipping as well as digital entertainment (i.e. music and video streaming) and exclusive deals (think Prime Day). While this is part of the company's explanation for the first price hike since 2018, the other is arguably even more important: the rise in wages and transportation costs.

As the following chart shows, Amazon’s logistics costs have skyrocketed over the past decade, with shipping and fulfillment costs growing almost 40-fold between 2009 and 2021. Last year alone, the company’s shipping costs, which include sortation and delivery centers and transportation costs, amounted to $76.7 billion, with fulfillment costs (e.g. costs of operating and staffing fulfillment centers) adding another $75.1 billion to a hefty logistics bill. While Amazon’s revenue also grew more almost 20-fold since 2009, that wasn’t enough to offset the surge in logistics costs. In 2009, shipping and fulfillment costs amounted to 15.6 percent of net sales. By 2021, that share had risen to 32.9 percent.

According to estimates from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, Amazon had 172 million U.S. Prime members at the end of 2021, up 30 million since the onset of the pandemic.

 

DESCRIPTION This chart shows the growth of Amazon's shipping and fulfillment costs.

 

References: Statista

https://www.statista.com/chart/17207/amazon-shipping-and-fulfillment-costs/

 

Key Points

- 최근 아마존은 미국 내 프라임 멤버십 가격인상을 발표

- 지난 몇년 동안 아마존은 빠른 무료배송은 물론 디지털 엔터테인먼트 밑 독점거래를 포함하여 Prime 회원에게 회원 혜택을 제공

- 아마존의 물류비용은 지난 10년 동안 급증했으며, 배송 및 주문처리 비용은 2009년에서 2021년 사이 약 40배 증가

- 주문처리 비용과 함께 막대한 물류비용이 추가되었으며, 아마존의 수익 역시 약 20배 증가했지만 물류비용의 급증을 상쇄하기에 충분하지 않음

- 아마존은 2021년말 기준 미국 내 1억 7,200만명의 프라임 회원을 보유하고 있으며, 이는 코로나 팬데믹 이후 3,000만명이 증가한 수치임