There’s no question Amazon Prime Day was a successful sales event for the company. It set an all-time record with estimated sales of $525 million for one day, though still not close to Alibaba’s one-day Singles Day sales of $14.3 billion on Nov 2015. We’ll look at results and also how competitors responded, what consumers got out of the promotion and whether online shoppers liked what they saw from Amazon.
Retail Dive provides an excellent analysis and five important lessons from Prime Day 2016. One-day Amazon Prime Day sales grew 60% from 2015 to an estimated $525 million according to FBIC analyst Deborah Weinswig. Amazon does not report actual sales in dollars, but other analysts speculated sales could be as much as $1 billion. Some Amazon brand products did very well, like Amazon’s Fire TV device which sold 2.5 times more units than 2015. Online orders increased by more than 60% worldwide and 50% in the US. And product sales? More than 90,000 TVs, two million toys and one million pairs of shoes were sold.
Despite checkout glitches many Amazon products still sold well including Amazon Fire TV devices, Kindle e-book readers, Fire tablets and Amazon Echo. Prime Day is also about selling Prime Memberships at $99 annually and which grew 35% in sales to 54 million members in 2015. The company reported mobile app orders doubled from 2015.
Canadian hammock maker Vivere sold 24,000 units compared to 14,000 on Black Friday last year. According to The Wirecutter, 2016 offered many more genuine deals than lat year’s promotion. Finally, we looked back at Alibaba’s impressive $14.3 billion Singles Day sales from Nov 2015 and considered how big a challenge it will be for anyone smaller to compete with these two powerful global e-commerce leaders.
Prime Day 2016: The 5 most important lessons from Amazon’s ‘biggest day ever’
Amazon Prime Day 2016 has come and gone. Roughly a year after Amazon first created a new retail holiday out of thin air, Prime Day returned Tuesday to shake up the sleepy summertime shopping season, promising Prime members a barrage of bargains on everything from chocolate fountains to Cheesecake Factory gift cards.
Apparently consumers really like chocolate and cheesecake. After Prime Day 2016 was over, Amazon called it the single biggest day in company history, with global merchandise sales eclipsing the first Prime Day event by more than 60% worldwide and more than 50% in the U.S. It was also the biggest day ever for Amazon devices globally. In all, Prime members across the globe saved more than double on deals over Prime Day 2015, the online retailer said.
Prime Day 2016 highlights include a 2.5x increase in Amazon Fire TV devices compared to a year ago, along with sales of hundreds of thousands of Kindle e-readers. Shoppers also purchased more than 2 million toys, more than a million pairs of shoes and upwards of 90,000 TVs. Prime member orders on the Amazon mobile application outpaced Prime Day 2015 app orders by more than 2x, and more than a million consumers accessed the app for the Amazon Prime Memberships for the first time.
But Prime Day is about far more than Prime numbers: It’s also a window into Amazon’s fascinatingly complex and ambitious strategy for total world domination. Here are five lessons drawn from the summer’s biggest shopping event, the role it plays in Amazon’s ever-evolving business and the threat it poses to the retail establishment. Via retaildive.com
Amazon Prime Day is biggest day for online retailer ever
So much for concerns that the second Prime Day event didn’t live up to Amazon’s expectations.
The online retailer said Wednesday that the self-created holiday was its biggest sales day ever, with worldwide orders rising more than 60 percent compared with the previous Prime Day. In the U.S., orders rose by more than 50 percent.
The company declined to share how many people signed up for Prime to participate in the sale. To qualify for the sales event, which was created last year to celebrate Amazon’s 20th birthday, shoppers need to be members of the service.
“The numbers blew me away,” R.J. Hottovy, Morningstar’s consumer strategist, told CNBC. He estimates the event may have added between $500 million and $600 million in incremental sales to the retailer’s topline. FBIC analyst Deborah Weinswig estimates sales at $525 million, up 26 percent from their projected sales of $415 million a year ago. Via cnbc.com
Amazon’s Prime Day 2016 Was an Unbridled Success
Prime Day 2015’s unbridled success cast some doubt as to whether Prime Day could live up to the original. Fortunately for Amazon, not only did the company’s self-created “holiday” surpass expectations, but it was its biggest sales day ever and pretty much confirmed Prime Day’s continuation.
Amazon did not say how many people signed up for its Prime service, which nets customers free two-day shipping, access to Prime Video and Prime Music, and other amenities, though the company was more than happy to toot its own horn by announcing it sold hundreds of thousands of Kindle devices. Overall, three times more Amazon-branded devices were purchased during Prime Day 2016 than during last year’s festivities. Furthermore, Amazon sold 2.5 times more Fire TV devices than on Prime Day 2015, with the Fire TV Stick Amazon’s best-selling device for the day.
Interestingly, Amazon Alexa, the brains behind the Echo and its smaller siblings, was used to buy one Alexa-exclusive deal per second on Prime Day. As for the Echo itself, it sold 2.5 times more than during its previous record day, jiving well with Amazon’s aspirations to be the center of your smart-home devices.
Finally, more Prime members are using the Amazon app to make their orders, with double the number of orders during Prime Day 2016 when compared to last year. Via digitaltrends.com
Why Prime Day Was a Big Win for Amazon – and for Other Retailers
Amazon’s self-created sales holiday on July 12 — Prime Day — set records for the two-year old event, and offered cues to longer-term shifts in retailing trends. Amazon’s success with Prime Day is a testament to the stickiness of its customers, whose growing numbers reveal the huge distance rival Walmart has to cover, according to experts.
Prime Day sales also came as a windfall for retailers. The only other big retail event this time of the year is the back-to-school shopping season during July and August. Amazon, meanwhile, is shifting strategies, pushing the “convenience” it offers as a shopping destination instead of its earlier, low-price positioning, analysts note.
On Prime Day, Amazon saw its online orders increase by more than 60% worldwide and 50% in the U.S., the company said in a press release. That day, it sold globally more than 90,000 TVs, more than two million toys and more than a million pairs of shoes, among other products. The event may have added between $500 million and $600 million in incremental sales for Amazon, Morningstar consumer strategist R.J. Hottovy said in a CNBC report.
Even as Amazon boasted about its Prime Day sales, it has to contend with rising shipping costs, according to Denise Dahlhoff, research director at Wharton’s Baker Retailing Center. “[Amazon is] trying to go more the higher-margin route,” she said. For example, it is “pushing movies because there are no delivery costs,” she noted. “Amazon’s positioning has changed from focusing on pricing to being more of a convenient retailer.” Via Knowledge @Wharton
Prime Day 2016 was Amazon’s biggest day ever
Yesterday’s checkout glitches didn’t impact Amazon’s ability to pull off another successful Prime Day sales event, as it turns out. The online retailer announced this morning, without giving specific figures, that its Prime Day 2016 was the “biggest ever.” Not just in terms of other Prime Days, either, but the “biggest day in the history of Amazon.” Tuesday’s customer orders were up by more than 60 percent worldwide, compared with last year’s Prime Day, and up by more than 50 percent in the U.S. Amazon says it was also the “biggest day ever” for Amazon devices globally.
This contradicts early reports that seemed to indicate that Amazon’s Prime Day 2016 U.S. sales were flat, according to ChannelAdvisor. However, ChannelAdvisor doesn’t monitor Amazon’s first-party sales, like those on its own devices – it only examines a sample of Amazon seller data. Instead, Amazon’s announcement is more in line with analyst expectations of Prime Day doubling last year’s sales, potentially even hitting close to a billion, some believed.
Amazon had discounted a variety of its devices, including Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Echo speakers, and more. These discounts were clearly able to boost Amazon’s overall sales for the day, as was the fact that Amazon better spread out its sales throughout the day, compared with last year. Many of its limited-time “Lightning deals,” for example, launched in the evening on Prime Day. Via techcrunch.com
Why I Still Hate Amazon Prime Day With a Passion
Amazon Prime Day isn’t about deals, bargains, or wiping the floor with Black Friday. That would suggest it’s something that’s designed to benefit the general public. No. It’s all a massive thinly veiled ploy to get everyone to sign up for Amazon Prime. It’s like one of those shifty ‘liquidated stock’ auctions where you have to pay an up front fee to get a chance to bid on a filing cabinet, or a pallet of printer paper in a dingy warehouse.
Don’t think it’s true? Research company CIRP says Amazon Prime membership grew by 35 percent in 2015 to 54 million people, up from 40 million at the end of 2014. “Growth was spread more evenly across the year, in a large part due to the success of Amazon Prime Day,” the report noted. In other words, the holiday season used to be the only time Prime membership saw a boost — for the fast shipping, presumably — so Amazon needed something mid-year to help convince people that Prime is for life, not just Christmas.
Think I’m making it up? Amazon says “More new members tried Prime worldwide than any single day in Amazon history,” on Prime Day 2015. That’s the kind of news Amazon wants to hear. Amazon Prime members are less likely to shop elsewhere. They paid $100 for the privilege of getting free two-day delivery, so they may as well make the most of it. Via digitaltrends.com
Here’s how much tech Amazon sold on Prime Day
Amazon said orders surpassed Prime Day 2015 by more than 60 per cent worldwide and 50 per cent in the US. Prime member orders on the Amazon app also surpassed Prime Day 2015 mobile app orders by more than 2 times – largely thanks to more than a million customers who used the Amazon app for the first time on Prime Day to shop and take advantage of the deals.
Amazon Echo owners even bought on average one Alexa-exclusive deal per second using their voice.
Here’s some other tech-related highlights
– Amazon Fire TV devices: Amazon sold over 2.5 times more Amazon Fire TV devices compared to Prime Day 2015, with the Fire TV Stick landing the ‘best-selling Amazon device” title.
– Toys: More than 2 million toys were purchased.
– Televisions: More than 90,000 TVs were purchased. Via pocket-lint.com
Small business sold 24K hammocks on Prime Day, Amazon’s biggest sales day ever
Amazon wasn’t the only one to have a record-breaking sales day on its retail holiday, Prime Day. Small businesses like Canadian retailer Vivere are calling it a win as well, after seeing its biggest sales day ever yesterday.
Ontario-based Vivere sold a whopping 24,000 hammocks on Prime Day this year. The company was sold out by 1:30 p.m. pacific time, according to sales manager Gary Pepper. Vivere dropped its retail price from $129.97 to $79.97 for the big day and was featured as a “Deal of the Day” by Amazon.
“The exposure alone makes the discounts worth it,” Pepper says. “You can accept a lower price because you make up for it in volume.” For context, last Black Friday, Vivere sold 14,000 units, and on an average month it sells 4,000 hammocks, Pepper says. This was its first time participating in Prime Day and orders continued at full price from third-party sellers once fulfillment centers ran out of its product. Via cnbc.com
What did Amazon Prime Day tell us about the way we shop?
Amazon’s statistics on its Prime Day event focus on the propensity of Londoners to buy electric toothbrushes and shoppers in general to buy Amazon products.
At InternetRetailing we were less interested in what shoppers bought, and more interested in what the event said about the way that shoppers in the UK and around the world buy. Here are some of our conclusions.
1. Customers really like an event
Prime Day 2016 was the biggest day that Amazon [IRDX RAMZ] has ever seen – by some way. The retailer, an Elite trader in IRUK Top500 research, said customers placed more than 60% more orders than they did on the first Prime Day last year. Like Black Friday, that suggests shoppers have got used to the idea and are keen to grab bargains. But it also suggests there’s been a significant increase in members of Amazon’s Prime subscription scheme over the last year. No doubt many will have signed up specifically for yesterday’s event – though it’s worth bearing in mind that those on a free trial of the service could take part and later cancel. By 6pm, said Doug Gurr, UK country manager, Amazon, “customers had already ordered more items than Prime Day last year.”
Amazon marketplace sellers also benefited from the influx of shoppers. “Prime Day,” said marketplace seller Dovi Brafman, chief executive of Sharkk, “helped us reach our highest sales day ever.” Via internetretailing.net
What Really Mattered on Amazon Prime Day 2016
During yesterday’s Amazon Prime Day, our deals team (with the help of our social team and editorial staff) dove deep into all of Amazon’s deals, and things turned out differently than last year. Prime Day 2015 proved to be mostly hype, but this time around we were pleasantly surprised by the quantity of deals, the selection, and the available stock. Prime Day 2016 was a solid event that included plenty of opportunities to save some serious cash on desirable products. We scanned about 7,950 deals and found 64 that we thought were good enough to recommend and post on our Deals page, in contrast to 3,228 scanned and 35 posted last year.
So was Amazon Prime Day worth it? For Prime members, the answer was most likely yes, and this year was far better than the previous one. Whereas the first Prime Day offered fewer deals in general and gave us more of the feeling that we had walked into a gigantic virtual dollar store, this year we found good deals in a wider variety of categories such as kitchen appliances and power tools. Some of the highlights included fantastic deals on some of our top Android phone picks, with multiple phones selling for $50 under their previous lows; a solid buy on our best carry-on luggage; a huge drop on our favorite smart light bulbs, the Philips Hue starter set; almost a full $100 drop on the Huawei smartwatch, our pick for people who like a bigger smartwatch; and nearly 50 percent off our upcoming pressure cooker pick. Via thewirecutter.com
Alibaba Singles’ Day Sales Reach $14.3 Billion, Smashing Record
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. logged a record 91.2 billion yuan ($14.3 billion) in sales on Singles’ Day, turning a sweethearts’ holiday dreamed up two decades ago into a major online shopping event.
Transactions had passed last year’s record of $9.3 billion before midday in China, according to the company. The top-selling items by retailers using Alibaba’s platform included baby-related and nutritional products, Nike sneakers and Levi’s jeans, the company said.
Chairman Jack Ma raised the stakes this year by moving the event’s headquarters to Beijing, bringing in more foreign brands and enlisting Hollywood celebrities Daniel Craig and Kevin Spacey to add glamour to the shopathon. Tapping into rising disposable incomes has paid off for China’s biggest e-commerce emporium as it captures more of the country’s surging smartphone use with restaurant deliveries and video streaming. Via bloomberg.com
Amazon Prime Memberships core strategy
Prime Memberships are critical to Amazon’s profitability, growth and future success. Stay with us as we chart the company’s global strategy and tactics. You can can get free, weekly news items in your inbox every Monday-Wednesday-Friday morning by signing up at the top of this post.