Amazon Brand Wins Most Prime Day Spending Despite Competition
(Bloomberg) -- Amazon.com Inc. captured the bulk of online spending during the first 24 hours of its Prime Day event, showing that customers continue to flock to the site for deals despite competing discounts offered by Walmart Inc., EBay Inc. and Best Buy.
Online shoppers spent more than 10 times as much money on Amazon in the first day than they did on Walmart and EBay combined, according to e-commerce research company Edison Trends. Sales in the first 24 hours were up 53% compared to the same period of last year’s Prime Day, Edison said.
Amazon on Wednesday said sales over the two days this year surpassed those on Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. The Seattle-based company launched Prime Day in 2015 to lure new Prime members, who pay monthly or annual fees for shipping discounts and other perks. Prime members spend more than twice as much on the site each year than non-Prime members, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. That makes a day of discounts worth it for Amazon to draw more spending through the year, especially in the busy holiday season.
Amazon said it added more new Prime members on July 15 than any previous day, and almost as many on July 16 – making these the two biggest days ever for member signups.
Despite a rough start, when critics said Prime Day resembled a rummage sale featuring discounts on obscure products, the event has evolved into an international shopping phenomenon. Amazon is using it to lure more Prime members internationally, including in key markets like India.
In the U.S., Amazon’s Prime Day sales will total $5.8 billion, according to estimates from Coresight Research.
To contact the reporter on this story: Spencer Soper in Seattle at ssoper@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Molly Schuetz
For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
