What do Amazon’s Prime Day results reveal about the US retail market?

Few events get the American retail industry buzzing quite like Amazon’s Prime Day, an annual shopping event with deals exclusively for Prime members.

Amazon’s first Prime Day was held on July 14, 2015, and was created to celebrate Amazon’s 20th anniversary. The event was originally marketed as a “one-day only event filled with more deals than Black Friday”, but thanks to increasing popularity over the years, it has since shifted to be a two-day extravaganza. 

This year’s Prime Day, which marked the 10th anniversary of this highly anticipated shopping event, took place on July 16-17 and generated record-breaking sales, thanks to a combination of unique offerings and enticing discounts.  

What did Prime Day 2024 results look like?

As Aditya Kaushik, a Coresight Research analyst, observed, “This year, Prime Day 2024 featured deals across a broad scope of offerings, including travel and grocery, underscoring Amazon’s focus on expanding its appeal and increasing consumer engagement in the shopping event as it faces more competition from sales events held by other major retailers in the US.”

According to Adobe Analytics, consumers spent around US$7.2 billion ($11 billion) on July 16, marking an 11.7 per cent increase compared to the year prior, and on July 17, consumers spent US$7 billion, marking a 10.4 per cent increase year-over-year. The total for the two-day event reached an impressive US$14.2 billion ($21.7 billion), up 11 per cent year-over-year. 

Kaushik cited several growth drivers behind this year’s event, such as the increased use of mobile devices, which drove nearly half (49.2 per cent) of online purchases over both days. Approximately, US$7 billion of Prime Day sales were made solely on mobile devices, marking an 18.6 per cent shift year-over-year. 

Another element was the increased focus on back-to-school shopping. Kaushik pointed out that this year’s Prime Day dates were strategically held much closer to the beginning of the American school year compared to Prime Day 2023, which ran from July 11-12.

According to Adobe Analytics, spending on products like backpacks, lunch boxes, stationery, and other school and office supplies was up 216 per cent across both days, in comparison to daily sales levels in June 2024, while spending for kids’ apparel was up 165 per cent in the same period.

Prime Day sales this year were also aided by fresher promotional deals such as travel offerings, including discounted cruise trips, which were first introduced during Prime Day 2023. Additionally, there were specific discounts on grocery orders through Amazon Fresh. This year, Amazon and Grubhub teamed up to offer a US$10 Amazon gift card reward on Grubhub orders of US$25 or more from June 26 to July 15 for Prime members. 

In a time when consumers are more price-sensitive than ever when it comes to grocery shopping, these types of promotions are not to be underestimated. 

Kaushik also noted that “Prime Day results indicate retailers can be optimistic about the holiday season”.

“Online traffic and demand were up this Amazon Prime Day and much of the online growth was based on shoppers buying more and not just due to higher prices (the prices were even lower than last year), reflecting that there was a unit growth than the dollar growth and hence volumes were up this year,” she said. 

“Therefore, if retailers deliver on heavy or on the right amount of discounting and providing true value, they can release the consumers’ pressure on their pockets and can build up demand and see success in terms of higher sales. And if they don’t, retailers may risk losing out as shoppers will go elsewhere.”

Are there any noteworthy competitors to Prime Day?

With the growing popularity of Amazon’s Prime Day, competing retailers have begun leaning into similar event-based promotions in July.

The list includes Best Buy’s Black Friday in July, Kohl’s Summer Cyber Deals sale, Macy’s All-Star Week, Nordstrom’s Anniversary Sale, Ulta Beauty’s Big Summer Sale, and so on. 

Kaushik noted that TikTok has even gotten in on the action, holding its first Deals For You Days event, offering discounts on thousands of products across its shopping platform at the same time as Prime Day.

However, data collected by Salesforce, a US-founded cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) platform, revealed that at the moment TikTok is nowhere near being a noteworthy contender to Amazon. 

Data gathered by the CRM platform, based on the activity of 1.5 million shoppers across the software company’s products, revealed that for non-Amazon retailers, gross merchandise volume growth in the US rose 3 per cent year-over-year during the two-day period of Amazon’s Prime Day sale. In comparison, gross merchandise growth was actually down 6 per cent during TikTok’s Deals for You Days event.

Part of the issue stemmed from TikTok’s lack of enticing discounts. According to Salesforce, the average discount on TikTok was only 18 per cent compared to the average discount during Prime Day, which was 22 per cent. 

The social media platform’s sales numbers were also hindered by a pricing glitch that occurred. On the first day of TikTok’s summer sale, discounts weren’t showing up on the platform, meaning that products were still displayed at full retail value. While the issue was resolved within seven hours, the technical error revealed that the platform still faces growing pains as it works to promote and expand awareness of the sales event. 

However, Deals for You Days was not a total loss for the company. In fact, Tiktok’s event drove sales to a historically high US$52 spend per customer, which had dipped since March. At this point in time, TikTok has a long way to go before it can compete with growing competitors like Temu and Shein or retail behemoths like Amazon. 

For retailers investing in large-scale sales events in July, it’s imperative to keep providing a unique curation of product offerings, discounts and deals, and tap into sales tactics, such as live streaming, to keep a competitive edge. 

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