Amazon Prime members are receiving ‘disproportionate value’ from deals: Vice President

Amazon Prime Vice President Jamil Ghani joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss reports of upcoming layoffs at the company, the state of the tech industry, and Prime membership growth.

Video Transcript

DAVE BRIGGS: Amazon shares down 2% today on some major news that the e-commerce giant, the country's second largest employer, will reportedly layoff as many as 10,000 employees beginning as soon as this week. The cuts will be the biggest in the company history and primarily impact devices, retail, and human resources.

Here to discuss the impact, as well as the coming holiday season, at Amazon Prime is the vice president of Amazon Prime, Jamil Ghani. Great to see you, sir. Allie Garfinkle also with us for the discussion. Great to see you, Allie. Jamil, we'll start with you. Your reaction to the news of the layoffs first.

JAMIL GHANI: I'd say I'm probably not the best person to talk about that. Obviously, the economy continues to be uncertain, but what I can tell you is that we're focused on delivering a fantastic holiday season for our Prime members. We've got so much going on from Thursday Night Football to "Rings of Power" to just releasing today the details on the 48-hour Black Friday event. So I'm really focused on taking care of our customers. And I'm excited about the weeks to come.

DAVE BRIGGS: Do you expect any impact from those layoffs to Amazon Prime?

JAMIL GHANI: No, we're focused as a team on delivering for our members across shopping, savings, shipping, and entertainment. And so I don't expect those changes to impact us. Like I said, we're focused on delivering a fantastic season for our members.

ALLIE GARFINKLE: So Jamil, talk to me a little bit about the current state of Prime membership. It's grown substantially in recent years. And I'd love to hear about where it's at right now, heading into this holiday season.

JAMIL GHANI: Yeah, I'd tell you, Allie, this is the most exciting time at Amazon Prime in the entire time I've been here. We have more going on for our members than ever before. Acquisition, sign-ups to the membership continue to be strong. Renewals are incredibly strong because members are getting disproportionate value from the membership. Just in the last couple of months, we have launched "Rings of Power," which had a breakout success. 25 million households watched on the very first day, and it's only grown over time.

Thursday Night Football launched in September as well. We had our biggest three hours of signups. It's continued to be a real driver of interest in becoming Prime members and then going on and engaging with everything else the membership has to offer. And then going into the season here, Prime early access sale kicked off the season for our Prime members. It was a first ever exclusive event in October.

And we're looking forward now to Black Friday, where you're going to have top brands like Yeti, Savage X Fenty from Rihanna, Sweaty Betty, Elizabeth Arden, and many, many others for our members and our customers overall to shop throughout the 48 hours. There's going to be something new through key periods every 30 minutes. And so I think the Prime membership continues to focus on investing and innovating on behalf of our members. And this Q4 is a great showcase of that.

ALLIE GARFINKLE: And talk to me a little bit about not only what Prime members should be expecting to see from you this holiday season, but what you're expecting to see from Prime members. We're coming off a moment where there are a lot of predictions about a muted holiday season. So I'd be curious as to your thoughts on that as well.

JAMIL GHANI: Yeah, I'd say that we had our largest ever Prime Day back in July, $1.7 billion saved, 300 million items purchased, unprecedented levels of engagement from our members. Prime early access was the sale where tens of millions of members engaged across the store. Our Prime members have told us time and time again that they value the fast, free, unlimited shipping. They value entertainment. But they also value savings.

And right now, with everything that's going on in the world and in the economy, I think that's more important than it's ever been. And so these events that we've had earlier in the year show that our Prime members can look to Prime to save. And I expect that Black Friday and Cyber Monday will be no different. We've got deals for them and for our customers, broadly, across the entire store, from Amazon products to devices to top brands.

We are offering, again, the top 100 lists, where you can get kind of the most giftable, the most sought after items curated by Amazon on their behalf. And then there's going to be special credit card offers with Chase Ultimate Rewards with our co-branded credit card. Just across the entire store is an opportunity not only to meet the needs and wants of those-- you have gifts to give to, but also save some money, which we know is really important for everybody.

DAVE BRIGGS: This is the first year where we saw two Amazon Prime Days, the latest being in October. How successful was that strategy? Can you quantify it in terms of sales? And is there any impact about that pull forward, how it impacts Black Friday and perhaps holiday bottom line?

JAMIL GHANI: Yeah, so the event was really successful, and it surpassed our expectations. Like I said, we had tens of millions of members engaging and saving across the entire store. They really appreciated what we've done to make it easier for them to find really personalized savings in terms of deal notifications, small business badging, and then also the curated top 100 list, which I know work really well in our household with two young kids to shop for as we go into the holiday season.

And so we expect that Black Friday and Cyber Monday will be strong. We really strategically thought about having deep discounts and notable savings throughout the entire season. We started that with Prime Early Access sale, which, as you said, was an exclusive event for our Prime members. But it's going to continue the entire season now with Black Friday coming up in just a couple of weeks' time.

So I would expect that it will be equally strong, again, for the reasons we cited before. Folks are looking for savings, particularly now, but they want to make sure that they get access to those items that they need or want. And their loved ones and families and friends also needed one.