Amazon Prime Wants To Be The Thing Students Can’t Live Without

Think of all the technological things we now can’t remember ever not having. Smartphones. Google. Uber. Netflix.

How about Amazon Prime?

That’s the goal for Amazon, to make the service something we cannot live with out. And, especially so for college kids.

That’s why it offers “Amazon Prime Student.” With that third word — student — stamped on the end, it allows for a half price membership and convenient pick-up kiosks located on their campus. Two simple offers that students may have a hard time passing up.

In fact, millions of students have already gotten in on the deal. What college kid wouldn’t? With speedy delivery, the option to choose from more than 3 million products, plus media like photo storage, music and streaming video — it’s a no brainer.

Experts say this model looks familiar.

For decades prior, soliciting special deals and promotions related to credit cards to this same age group helped card companies lure young consumers and keep them loyal though graduation and into their adult life.

That’s the plan with Amazon Prime Student, which will help them graduate their purchasing habits on to livelihoods that involve home goods, food and one day, things like diapers.

Meeting the customer where they are is a simple plan, but it makes sense. On campus, special Amazon Prime Student lockers for picking up packages allow students to pick up packages after they leave class or at the library before heading back to their dorm or an apartment. That’s especially helpful for students who don’t have a secure way of receiving packages like a doorman or a P.O. Box. It helps that the lockers are centrally located and offer same-day pick up or drop off, which is faster than standard two-day delivery.

So how many campuses have raised their hands for Amazon Prime Student?

By the end of the year, 16 schools — including Purdue University, University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Pennsylvania — will be included, so that more than 500,000 college students will have been served by one of the kiosks.

And, not to mention those bookstores, which may no longer be truly stores with books for long.

Amazon has been teaming up with college bookstores, as PYMNTS reported earlier just last month, to be the official book retailer for many of these same schools. Students purchase texts — and more than just books — through the school’s specially promoted Amazon page.

More schools, more students.

Students could very well incorporate Amazon Prime into their college lives so thoroughly that they will have never known otherwise.