Amazons
AMZN
announced the company had its biggest Prime Day event ever, driving consumers to spend online. Prime members purchased more than 375 million items worldwide and saved more than $2.5 billion on millions of deals across Amazon’s extensive product line. “The first day of Prime Day was the largest sales day in Amazon’s history, and Prime members saved more this year than any other Prime Day event,” said Doug Herrington, CEO of Amazon Stores.

On the first day of Prime Day 2023, more deals were offered than on any other Prime Day, with home, fashion, and beauty among the top-selling deal categories. Top selling individual products including Fire TV Stick, LANEIGE
IGE
Lip Glowy Balm, Apple AirPods, and Bissell Little Green Portable Deep Cleaner.

Invitations only deals worked well

Amazon used its invite only days ahead of Prime Day to entice its Prime Members to shop early. “It is not as much of a surprise as history repeating itself. Just like we went from Black Friday sales to those sales starting on or before Thanksgiving and going for more than a week through Green Monday, we saw Prime Day become a multi-day affair this year,” said Sarah Engel, President of January Digital. She compared how the invite only deals offered prior to the start of the sale were much like the door-busters of retail’s past. Meanwhile, hundreds of promotions have continued beyond Prime Day so the event, while breaking many records, started early and is ending later.

Online purchasing across US driven by Prime Day promotion

Although Amazon did not disclose the specific revenue generated for its Prime Day event, the highly promoted event drove purchasing online throughout the US market across many retailers. Consumers spent $12.7 billion online in the US over the two day Amazon Prime Day event, setting a new record for online shopping and representing a 6.1% growth year-over-year, according to Adobe Analytics.

“You also saw larger retailers take advantage of the Prime Day halo effect to launch mid-summer savings events, many of which last longer than the official 2 days of Prime Day,” said Engel. Some examples include the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale which started its Early Access sale to coincide with Prime Day, Target Circle Week, Best Buy’s Black Friday in July and Walmart Plus Week.

The ecosystem expanded

Amazon included third party sellers on its marketplace to participate in the promotional activities in connection with Prime Day to further the spend in its own ecosystem. “Retailers have realized that the closed ecosystem nature of Amazon shopping does not open up as many opportunities for them as once