Perhaps one of the biggest milestones in electronic commerce around the world was the arrival of Amazon Prime, a model that now seems to be replicating Mercado Libre around a moderate announcement.
By February 2005, Amazon Prime was a one-of-a-kind proposition: For a $ 79 down payment, customers were rewarded with up to two-day delivery on all their orders. At the time, Amazon was charging customers $ 9.48 for two-day delivery, meaning that if only nine of these orders were placed in a year, Prime was already profitable for the customer.
The truth is that over time, the benefits of this membership (which now costs $ 12.99 per month) have grown, where perhaps one of the advantages especially valued by users is access to the company’s streaming service, where original and licensed productions coexist to form a particularly attractive portfolio.
The “Prime” of Mercado Libre
With these movements, Amazon has shown on endless occasions that to dominate e-commerce and the business world it is necessary to diversify and the premise has been well read and applied by Mercado Libre, a firm that now seems to launch an option with many similarities to Amazon Prime.
And is that around the launch of Star + in Mexico, the Latin American e-commerce platform revealed a subscription service which allows customers to pay for “the highest level of purchase” to access certain benefits.
The maximum purchase level is part of a kind of loyalty program in which the greater the frequency of transactions, Mercado Libre delivers a status to each user which allows them to access certain benefits, so far, free and organic.
The maximum level is 6 and now users will be able to access it by paying a monthly fee that varies depending on the current level in which they are now:
- Level 1: 225 pesos per month
- Level 2: 199 pesos per month
- Level 3: 175 pesos per month
- Level 4: 150 pesos per month
- Level 5: 125 pesos per month
In this way, for this monthly fee, users will be able to access a series of benefits similar (although not at all the same) to those of Amazon Prime where preferential prices are counted for services such as Disney + (as well as for its Combo + proposal), Paramount + , Deezer and HBO Max.
Additional regarding the e-commerce service, although there is no free shipping option, if you count some discounts, exclusive offers, preferential shipping prices, returns in 30 days and preferential access to customer service.
Beyond e-commerce
The launch of Mercado Libre is relevant if we consider that in the face of more and more brands turned to e-commerce, players who seek to capitalize on this terrain will have to start looking for new ways to be relevant even if this does not mean a completely free service for the consumer.
The issue is not minor if one considers the rapid growth of economic models that allow the shopper to access products and services through processes outside the conventional ones, where the main attraction is not the price, the ease of access to said solutions or the inventory diversity. The competition is diversified with what to attract and, above all, to retain the customer seems a daunting task.
The economic model under subscription, which today is not limited to content or services, is beginning to gain weight as a potential competitor for retail chains. The great success of this scheme is that it allows the shopper to pay a non-excessive fixed amount to periodically obtain products – almost of any nature – without necessarily going to a physical point of sale. Beyond the product itself, the shopper pays for the experience that the process of accessing the solutions to their needs entails, which, according to MarketingLand, has allowed it to grow 3,000 percent during the last three years.