With Prime Day hitting Oct. 13-14, the unofficial kickoff of a very different holiday season, sellers are geared up to take advantage of the massive shopping event, but the proximity to other mega events from Thanksgiving on may lead shoppers and sellers to choose one or the other vs. both. Still Prime Day 2020 is expected to break records.
Alibaba set another Singles Day record this year on 11/11/19, recording $38.4 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) during the 24-hour promotion created as a reverse spin on Valentine’s Day 10 years ago, up 25% from last year. By comparison, Adobe is forecasting $29 billion in total ecommerce sales for Cyber Weekend 2019.
Spending on ecommerce ads rose 115% in the third quarter compared to last year, and was up 51% over Q2, driven largely by Amazon, a seasonal surge for Prime Day and a strong back-to-school season. A new Q3 report from Marin Software also showed that mobile continues its dominance.
Walmart reported a 37% increase in ecommerce sales in Q2, the same as in Q1 and supported by strong growth in grocery, as its massive digital investments and focus continue to pay off in its locked battle with Amazon. The company is projecting full-year ecommerce growth of 35%, leveraging its huge store base for fulfillment.
Prime Day saw 175 million items purchased by Prime members over the two days, according to Amazon, eclipsing its 2018 Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales combined, while analysts pegged total GMV at $6 billion to $6.2 billion. See what other interesting statistics we found to paint a picture of the concocted “Christmas in July.”
Large U.S. retailers over $1 billion saw a nice Prime Day bump on July 15 according to data from Adobe Analytics, with a 64% increase in sales vs. a typical Monday, up from 54% last year. Smaller retailers under $5 million, meanwhile, realized a smaller 30% sales lift, Adobe said. Meanwhile, some checkout glitches recurred this year.
Prime Day, running for 48 hours on July 15-16, is expected to generate $5.8 billion in global sales, with an estimated 250 retailers drafting in its wake as more of them realize the huge potential. Also, Prime membership has grown to 105 million in the U.S., and electronics, home goods and apparel are the hot categories.
A survey by JDA Software found that more than half of U.S. consumers – 52% – ran into technical difficulties during Prime Day. Of that group, 27% either gave up without making a purchase or bought less than they had planned. Amazon is also facing allegations of raising prices on some products, with the FTC looking into it.
Amazon said Prime Day was another big winner, calling it the biggest shopping day in its history, with more than 100 million products purchased by Prime members during the 36-hour extravaganza that stretched from mid-afternoon on July 16 to the early morning hours of July 18 on the east coast.
Amazon Prime Day got off to a bit of a rocky start, with a website glitch that disappointed and angered shoppers, a strike in European fulfillment centers and some protests in the U.S. over the sale of books by fringe groups. Yet the company said sales out of the gate were pacing ahead of 2017.