Introduction
Amazon Ads recently introduced the amazon_retail_purchases table — part of the same-named program — which tracks a five-year purchase history by user and ASIN.
(You can find the documentation titled “Introduction to amazon_retail_purchases” in the AMC directory.)
Using this dataset, I built a customer cohort report — also known as a Fulton Report — consisting of four loyalty segments, and compared their three-year performance.
The first two of the five available years were used for customer cohort segmentation.
(See the segmentation rule chart below.)

Why This Analysis Matters
The strength of this report is that it allows marketers to assess weekly topline revenue performance by customer loyalty segment, decomposed into three intuitive drivers:
- Underlying number of customers based on prior year purchases.
- Retention rate (% of retained customers)
- Revenue per retained customer
These metrics apply to the first three repeat-customer segments.
This structure reveals which customer loyalty segment is performing above or below expectations relative to your annual plan or relative to prior year counterpart.
Because the underlying number of customers is known a priori, it provides an assumption check against your retention rate targets in the operating plan.

Current-Year-New Customers
For the Current-Year-New segment, retention metrics do not yet apply.
The focus is instead on tracking the number of new buyers relative to plan or prior year on a weekly basis.
Monitoring this metric weekly helps evaluate acquisition pace early in the fiscal cycle.
Why This Approach Is Powerful
The AMC loyalty segmentation report offers a forward-looking diagnostic that identifies growth potential earlier than traditional unit-economics or product-based sales reports.
Even if the report does not explicitly incorporate LTV numbers specifically, it over time implicitly takes care of Lifetime Value of the customers in the long run in that the current growth of repeat customer segments you are observing now is the reflection of repeat purchases activitives the customers you had acquired in the prior years. It gives you the feedback on the assumed plan numbers, say, retention rate you had made a couple of months ago, then you will update your assumption over the course of operating period.
It turns AMC data into a strategic planning and performance-tracking tool, not just a measurement report.
Data Accuracy Check
A common question is whether AMC-derived revenue aligns with Vendor Central data.
In practice, the difference is minimal — typically around 0.1% annually, confirming strong consistency and reliability for business analysis.
Customer Segmentation Rule
Alt text: Customer segmentation rule chart defining Prior-year-non-new, Prior-year-new, 1-year-inactive, and Current-year-new segments for AMC Fulton Report.
Takeaway
By leveraging the amazon_retail_purchases table, you can transform Amazon Marketing Cloud from a measurement platform into a strategic forecasting engine — quantifying retention, identifying growth opportunities, and validating your annual plan assumptions with precision.
Amazon Marketing Cloud Practitioner