Is Amazon Prime Day the next Black Friday?
Having just reached its third successful year, Amazon Prime Day could be creeping up on Black Friday’s great success. However, they do have one big difference. Despite their similarities, Amazon has limited its discount day to Prime members only, but is this really a problem?
Having made a profit of 2.5 billion pounds this year, the company built on this success and upped their sales from the previous two Amazon Prime Day’s by 250%, watching sales soar through the last few hours of the offer.
And although Black Friday is open to anyone who is crazy enough to risk the crowds, Prime Day did shockingly well considering the restrictions. You can’t also help but wonder if Prime subscriptions soared in the days before the offer launched? Questioning again whether the whole idea is just another PR stunt for Amazon, as we have discussed before.
Interestingly Amazon Prime day also did its bit for the rest of the retail market as it caused a ‘halo’ effect, with a massive 50% of consumers visiting other online retailers on the same day. Which brings us onto the topic of peak. If Amazon Prime Day continues it success, could it become an entirely new ‘peak’ for retailers across the globe? If consumers are already shopping and excitable are retailers going to see a direct impact on their own sales at this time of year, every year? Can the logistical infrastructure cope with this and did retailers anticipate this? Whatever happens, I am certain retailers won’t be seeing it as a negative.
So could it really become the next Black Friday?
Black Friday is a hype that echoes through the retail industry well in advance of the day itself, with IT teams frantically trying to ensure their websites don’t fail, and marketing teams exciting consumers with teasers of the deals to come. However although Prime Day seemed to have little hype, it achieved pretty impressive stats considering most of the nation weren’t hugely aware of the day itself.
But despite all this, I feel it is yet another Amazon PR stunt and one that is unlikely to persuade more consumers to sign up to Amazon Prime, despite the discounts. It will be interesting to see however, if these days had a direct impact on the Black Friday sales that Amazon then saw, or if consumers just took advantage of the discounts twice in one year?
Will it last? Only time will tell.
The facts
- You have to be a member of Amazon Prime to buy, but becoming a member seems pretty easy. All you needed was at least a trial membership to indulge in the crazy sale making Prime day just as easily accessible as Black Friday.
- An Amazon Prime membership is an annual fee of £79, complete with a month’s free trial.
- Amazon Prime Day has been a different date for the past 3 years running but all fall in mid July, it took place on the 10th this year.
- Amazon’s very own echo speaker was on sale for £79.99, it’s lowest price yet.
- Some of their Kindle’s saw impressive prices too, The Kindle Paperwhite went down to £79.99 from £109.99 and the Kindle Fire 8 HD down to £49.99 from £79.99.
- Others were impressed with the offer on the Samsung Galaxy S8, an upfront cost of only £125 from a previous £235 and a monthly contract of only £27.99pm, however this deal ran through mobiles.co.uk and was only available to TechRadar readers.
Did you take part in Amazon Prime Day? How was the experience? Tweet us your thoughts @NeoPRLtd
