4 Takeaways From This Year’s Amazon Prime Day

Posted on:

August 2, 2023

On July 11 and 12 of 2023, Amazon Prime members purchased more than 375 million items while saving more than $2.5 billion on deals specific to the event.¹ Not surprisingly, this resulted in the biggest Prime Day to date. Also unsurprising was the emergence of interesting campaigns and trends. Here are a few.

1. Celebrity Brands Expand Their Presence

This year’s Prime Day included the promotion of many brands associated with influencers and celebrities. On the more famous side, these included:

Betty Buzz (Blake Lively’s seltzer)
Prime (Logan Paul’s energy drink)
Chamberlain Coffee (founded by British YouTuber Emma Chamberlain)
Lemme (Kourtney Kardashian’s vitamin brand)

One might expect such enterprises to rely primarily on a direct-to-consumer approach; however, we may be entering a new era. If this year is anything to go by, it seems that celebrity-backed brands and Amazon make a logical match, with Prime Day deals on the above brands ranging from 20% to 40% off.

2. More People Are “Buying Now, Paying Later”

According to Adobe Analytics, 6.5% of Prime Day orders (including both days) made use of Amazon’s buy-now-pay-later capability.² This figure, which drove more than $920 million in revenue, also marks a 20% increase over the previous year.³

Why is this significant? Deferred payment plans tend to represent a practical, budget-minded approach to shopping, often used to acquire necessities, or at least things found in the average household (think televisions).

In a way, this can be interpreted as pointing in the opposite direction of Prime Day as a unique shopping “event,” which carries connotations of products that are luxurious or somehow special. Instead, it is becoming a time for consumers to save money on the things they were going to buy anyway.

3. Amazon and Priceline Join Forces

Another notable development was the travel industry dipping its toes in the Prime Day waters for the first time.This year, Priceline teamed with Amazon to offer 20% off Priceline Express Hotel deals—a perk usually reserved for Priceline VIPs—to Prime Day Shoppers using a specific promo code.⁴

This points to a couple of interesting commercial realities for the world of 2023. First, the travel industry is bouncing back in a big way, particularly as Americans take advantage of the first true post-COVID-era summer to book their vacations. Of course, this is good news for a company like Priceline.But perhaps even more notably, the collaboration between Amazon and Priceline suggests an increased interest on Amazon’s part in non-endemic market segments—that is, brands that do not sell physical products on the platform itself. In fact, less than a year ago, the eCommerce giant opened new Sponsored Display ad capabilities to non-endemic advertisers.⁵

4. Other Players Enter the Game

This year, 40% of consumers made Amazon purchases during Prime Day, while 20% made Walmart purchases during Walmart+ Week.

Did you know that Walmart has its own equivalent of Amazon Prime Day? If not, you are far from alone, as Walmart+ Week—also promoted as Walmart Plus Week—has yet to establish the name recognition that Prime Day enjoys. This year, 40% of consumers made Amazon purchases during Prime Day, while 20% made Walmart purchases during Walmart+ Week.⁶

It’s a difference made all the more pronounced by the fact that access to Walmart+ Week discounts does not technically require a Walmart+ membership.

For now, it makes sense for Walmart to hitch its wagon to Amazon’s star by running Walmart Plus Week concurrently with Prime Day, albeit beginning earlier and ending later (this year’s ran from July 10 through 13). Meanwhile, Target has entered the arena of member-exclusive sales events with Target Circle Week (this year’s running July 9 through 15, giving it the advantage of longest timespan).

Expect all three contenders to grow in scope and significance—and perhaps enter their true prime—next year and beyond.

Sources

The first day of Prime Day was the single largest sales day ever on Amazon, helping make this the biggest Prime Day event ever, Amazon (July 13, 2023). https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-prime-day-2023-stats
Vivek Pandya, Adobe Analytics: Prime Day drove record U.S. online spending, bolstered by deep discounts, Adobe Blog (July 13, 2023). https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2023/07/13/adobe-analytics-prime-day-drove-record-online-spending-bolstered-deep-discounts
Pandya.
Alison Fox, Score 20% Off Priceline Hotel Bookings for Amazon Prime Day – What to Know, Travel + Leisure (July 12, 2023). https://www.travelandleisure.com/priceline-amazon-prime-day-hotel-deals-7559190
Kiri Masters, Amazon Sets Its Sights on an Even Bigger Prize: The Non-Endemic Advertiser, Forbes (November 21, 2022). https://www.forbes.com/sites/kirimasters/2022/11/21/amazon-sets-its-sights-on-an-even-bigger-prize-the-non-endemic-advertiser
Zak Stambor, Walmart+ will surpass 29 million members this year, Insider Intelligence (July 24, 2023). https://content-na1.emarketer.com/walmart-memberships-will-grow-10-4-this-year

Contributors

SAm Paciello

Sr. Art Director

ERIC MILLER

Copywriter

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POST TAGS: AMAZON, AmazonPrime, AmazonPrimeDay, Priceline, PrimeDay, WalmartPlus, WalmartPlusWeek

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