Helped by some deep discounts, Amazon Prime Day, an annual two-day ecommerce event that ran July 16 and 17, generated a record $14.2 billion in U.S. online sales this year. That’s 11% more than last year, according to Adobe Analytics, which pulled data from 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites across 18 product categories.
Here are the top trends for digital marketers to consider as they plan for holiday sales in the coming months. Although the event is hosted by ecommerce giant Amazon, other chain stores and specialty retailers ran concurrent promotions.
Dig deeper: Amazon Prime Big Deal Days in October
Mobile boost
Much of the Prime Day growth was driven by mobile. A full $7 billion of sales went through mobile devices, marking an 18.6% increase over last year.
Turnaround for big-ticket items
Economic headwinds hit growth on big purchases in the first half of 2024. However, some of these same product categories were in big demand during Prime Day.
Home, furniture and appliance categories saw a 76% boost in sales, Adobe Analytics found.
On the first day alone, the home furnishings category saw a doubling of online transactions and a conversion rate up 75%, according to commerce media platform Criteo.
“The electronics, apparel and furniture categories make up nearly half of ecommerce spend but have seen low single-digit growth in the first half of 2024,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst, Adobe Digital Insights, in a release. “It’s clear now that the Prime Day event has been a catalyst across these major categories, with discounts deep enough for consumers to hit the buy button and upgrade items in their homes.”
Discounts were higher this year
Salesforce, which analyzes ecommerce buying in its Commerce Cloud (including the activity of 1.5 billion shoppers), agreed with Adobe that deeper discounts spurred sales.
U.S. Prime Day discounts averaged 22%, up 10% over last year. The categories with the highest discounts were general apparel (average discount of 33%), home and furniture (21%) and health and beauty (21%).
“For the first time in a long time we’re seeing order volumes turn positive and discounting is high,” said Caila Schwartze, director of consumer insights for Salesforce. “The lesson is a simple one — if retailers deliver on discounting and providing true value, they will release that pressure valve of built-up demand and see incredible success. If they don’t, retailers may risk losing out as shoppers will go elsewhere.”
Prime Day halo effect keeps expanding
The number of participating mass retailers and multi-category specialist retailers also running sales was up 88%, according to Criteo. The company analyzed over 1,300 retailers and ecommerce sites outside of Amazon.
Twenty-eight percent of retailers either hosted their own sales events or benefitted from a halo effect this year, seeing a 73% increase in online transactions on Prime Day’s first day. This boost was 21 percentage points higher than last year, which raised transactions 52% above an average day of ecommerce business.
Helping teachers ‘clear the list’
Even though it’s summer vacation time, teachers were top-of-mind on social during Prime Day.
Social marketing company Sprout Social tracked nearly 296,000 Prime Day-related social mentions over the two days, and #ClearTheList topped the list of mentions.
This shout-out refers to teachers’ wish lists for the year ahead. By using this hashtag, students and their parents showed intent to chip in and get something for the classroom for the school year ahead. #ClearTheList garnered 18,447 mentions in Sprout Social’s survey, and “teacher” was mentioned another 11,173 times.
Here are the other top social keywords:
- Kindle: 13,506 mentions
- Samsung: 7,099 mentions
- Apple: 4,568 mentions
- TV/television: 3,821 mentions
- Watch: 2,493 mentions
- iPhone: 2,313 mentions
- Air pods: 2,022 mentions
- Alexa: 2,000 mentions
Total engagement for the 296,000 mentions included nearly 1.2 million likes, comments or shares — amounting to 14.74 billion potential impressions, according to Sprout Social. Sentiment was split between 61% positive, 29% neutral and 10% negative engagements.
TikTok Shop ‘Deals For You Days’ no match for Prime Days
TikTok Shop launched “Deals For You Days,” a social commerce promotion, on July 9. The influence of TikTok creators on younger consumers isn’t in question. In terms of performance, it posed no threat to Prime Day — at least this year.
Salesforce found “Deals For You Days” didn’t drive value or higher discounts among retailers.
GMV (gross merchandise value) growth was down 6% during the TikTop Shop promotion, whereas it increased 3% during Prime Day.
Discounts were also lower during “Deals For You Days” than on Prime Day — 18% versus 22%, according to Salesforce.
“Comparing not only Amazon’s Prime Day but other sales events as well, TikTok’s event marks a turning point,” said Roy Avidor, CEO of multichannel growth platform Cymbio. “Brands will look to get even more involved in social commerce in the coming months, as this is where consumers are and where consumers want to shop.”
“While Amazon Live hasn’t enabled brand engagement outcomes as potently as many other video and social commerce platforms, Amazon is a major beneficiary from the broader social commerce sector (videos referencing Amazon Prime Day amassed 400 million views on TikTok last year),” said Uren Dhanani, vice president at global investing firm ComCap. “It stands to reason that TikTok would want to redirect a portion of those eyeballs to its own TikTok Shop and ‘Deals for You Days’ event this year, but overall, we expect TikTok and social commerce to continue to boost Prime Day sales instead of making a dent in them.”
The TikTok Shop and Amazon Live square-off will likely only intensify as we head into the holidays.
