Amazon Offers GenZ Value with Discounted Student Loans
Michael Spencer
A.I. Writer, researcher and curator - full-time Newsletter publication manager.
From Amazon's new private apparel labels to discounting student loans for Amazon prime student members, Amazon is doing everything right to to appeal to Millennials.
The numbers cannot be ignored: eighty million Millennials wielding $200 billion in buying power are entering their peak earning and spending years.
Meanwhile Millennials remain poised to enter their spending prime as the average aged Millennial considers to start having a family. Amazon Prime is already THE one-stop place for membership perks, with 2-day shipping, free streaming via Prime Video, unlimited storage, etc...
Enter Amazon's GenZ Customer Acquisition Strategy
What is the pain point for striving and struggling young Millennials and GenZ in a post-2008 recession world? You got it, student loans. Amazon has announced recently plans to offer Amazon Prime Student customers a discounted interest rate.
If Wells Fargo can offer a 0.50 percent interest rate discount to Amazon Prime student customers, Amazon is banking on the power of the future. Just as FinTech is poised to disrupt the lending space, this is showing a commitment on Amazon's side to further increase the value of its brand to the next generation of GenZ consumers.
Not Just Convenience - Future Retention
With now 231k employees, Amazon is taking its nickname—the Everything Store—quite seriously.
Wells Fargo is the 2nd largest private student lender by origination volume, with over 1 million customers, with over 6,000 locations. Amazon Prime Student customers, are you listening?
Prime Student, is a version of the Prime membership program eligible to those with an .edu email address. Being half the cost of an ordinary Prime membership, at $49, all the usual benefits stack along with one-day pick up at a large number of campuses.
Corporate Social Responsibility
By discounting students and enabling them leverage a tremendous package, Amazon is really paying it forward to the future. This partnership likely will be a multi-year standing offer, which offers value, convenience in a strategic way that's designed for long-term acquisition and customer retention.
While Wells Fargo handles the loan, Amazon is disrupting the value offer of what Amazon Prime means and is scaling that level of convenience to new impossible heights.
The best way to increase brand affinity, is really to create value and conditions where consumer reciprocity is not just desirable, it's without friction.
Investing in the future of people and human talent and capital, is the the most a native form of corporate social responsibility.
Millennial Perspective
With an absurd acceleration of the rise of student loans in the past few years, deals and discounts are becoming incredibly important for the new consumer. Interested in more of my retail insights? You can read more of them here.
Since students can see as much as a 0.75% reduction on their student loan interest rate, this is a signal of things to come in a game of paying it forward and the story of Amazon's epic brand value. Can convenience scale? It appears it can, Amazon Prime is approaching a critical mass as an ageless value proposition.
Will a loan discount encourage younger Millennials & GenZ to become Amazon Prime Student members as a pipeline to becoming full members later on?
#EdInsights
Writer/ Poet ( self employed)
8yEvery giant company at its last stage of its monopoly cycle like to have its brand credit card or loan system under its own system. Every giant company like to be part of the overpriced manual feed system of free risk business cycles of banks and insurance. Little or big discount will not change the huge profitability of the overpriced system of the manual feed system?