Amazon (AMZN) reported its largest sales day ever on July 11, the first 24 hours of its annual Prime Day discount period.
Customers purchased over 375 million items during the first day of deals, saving $2.5 billion overall, Amazon said Thursday. The famous shopping event is increasingly viewed as an indicator of the state of the consumer, who has been beleaguered by inflation, high interest rates, and the pending resumption of student loan payments.
"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," Amazon Stores CEO Doug Herrington said in a press release.
The record single-day sales totaled $6.4 billion in purchases, Adobe Analytics data showed — an increase of nearly 6% from last year. Sales on the second day also appear to have shown strength, totaling $6.3 billion. Amazon’s stock rose about 2.13% in early Thursday trading.
This year marked the ninth iteration of what Amazon calls its biggest deal event for members of its Prime subscription service. Since its inception in 2015, Prime Day has sparked a “halo” effect of deals across the e-commerce industry, according to Michael Greene, SVP of global vertical strategy at Criteo.
"It’s not just Amazon that benefits from the summer shopping excitement," Greene previously told Yahoo Finance. "Other retailers have launched competing events — like Walmart+ Week and Target Circle Week — that led to a boost in traffic and sales."
The broader ramifications of Prime Day mean that this year’s record sales could be a “bellwether” for 2023 holiday shopping, Greene added, since it helps quantify how much caution consumers are exerting amid the current economic pressures.
Amazon may have taken note of the higher stakes for Prime Day this year. Ahead of the event, the e-commerce giant advertised "heavily" on TV, including advertising for deals with their partners, Storch Advisors CEO Gerald Storch previously told Yahoo Finance Live (video above).
"Amazon is throwing everything at it," Storch said.
While analysts’ predictions for Prime Day sales appear to have come to fruition, don’t take that as the only indication of how much consumers will spend in retail the rest of the year, Storch said, since many may have held off on purchases to wait and see if they would be discounted this week.
"I think this is an interesting day in terms of looking at consumer spending and as we go through earnings season, looking at the retailers more broadly. I wouldn't expect seismic shifts, though," Kristen Bitterly, Citi Global Wealth head of North American investments, told Yahoo Finance Live on Tuesday.
Amazon Prime Day sales growth has slowed since the pandemic. While sales rose 17% in 2022 and 8% in 2021, those figures are lower than the year-over-year growth in 2019 and 2020, where sales rose 67.9% and 43%, respectively.
Jared Mitovich is a writer at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter @jmitovich
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