What: For Amazon to keep cash flow, they will be raising prime subscriptions from USD 119 to USD 139 per year, making it their first price increase since 2018.

Why is it important: Amazon believes Prime offers more value now, with the rollout of Free Same-Day Delivery to more places, more Prime-eligible products in the marketplace and expansions across prescriptions, Amazon Music, Prime Reading and Prime Gaming.

Reason for excitement, however, include Amazon’s investment in electric vehicle company Rivian, which went public in November and Amazon’s ad business breaking out revenues for the first time reporting USD 9.7 billion for a growth of 32%.

The upcoming opening of Amazon Style is another reason to look forward. The physical apparel store in Los Angeles that plans to use machine learning for tailored recommendations as people shop also plans to give customers tech features, such as the ability to send items to a fitting room by tapping a button in the app.

Whether shoppers immediately flock to brick-and-mortar Amazon apparel stores Amazon has padding its wallet, like the Prime price increase.

Amazon to raise prime subscription in the US