There’s no contest for the favorite online shopping destination of US teens.
According to a new survey from PiperJaffray, 47% of teens say Amazon is their preferred shopping site. Nike.com is a distant second, ranking first in the hearts of just 5% of teens.
PiperJaffray’s findings are based on responses from 8,600 teens, split between 6,200 “average-income” teens (household income of about $56,000) and 2,400 “upper-income” teens (household income of $102,000). Respondents were, on average, 15.9 years old.
Amazon is particularly dominant among upper-income teenage boys, 53% of whom picked Amazon as their online shopping destination of choice. That was down by two percentage points from the same time last year. Thirty-eight percent of upper-income teenage girls picked Amazon as their preferred website, up from 33% in 2017.
Amazon began targeting teen shoppers in October 2017 when it created an option for teens to shop on the site with their own login. “Amazon for teens” allows teens ages 13 to 17 search, browse, and place orders that then go their parents for final approval (orders not approved within 48 hours are cancelled). Parents can also set a spending limit below which orders are approved automatically. In a survey of 2,752 global Quartz readers in November and December 2017, 12% of respondents with teenagers said they planned to give their teen access to an Amazon account.
The company also reportedly spoke to banks earlier this year about creating a banking option for teens and other young users who don’t have their own credit card.
Amazon’s popularity among any age group isn’t surprising, considering how ubiquitous its e-commerce offerings and Prime subscriptions are in America. Piper Jaffray estimates that 80 million US households have a Prime membership, about half of which are households that earn $68,000 or more a year.