Price promotions and a good old-fashioned marketing blitz can still move consumers.
While many fashion brands have sought to wean themselves off of price cuts to move goods — looking instead to cater to their best customers at full price — Amazon Prime Day proved that the old tricks still work, especially with inflation running at levels not seen since 1981.
Adobe estimated that Amazon’s Prime Day pushed U.S. e-commerce sales to a combined $11.9 billion during the course of the two-day event, ended Wednesday. That marked an increase of 8.5 percent over a year ago when Adobe estimated Prime Day drove the broader two-day digital take to $11 billion.
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Discounts were sharpest on toys (15 percent off) and apparel (12 percent off), Adobe said, adding that the average online revenue lift across the U.S. was 141 percent compared to an average June day.
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“With ‘back-to-school’ around the corner and promotional discounts being quite favorable for consumers, we saw accelerated growth momentum for days that have historically produced significant spending,” said Pat Brown, vice president at Adobe. “It’s apparent that consumers are incredibly price conscious, and it will be important for retailers to leverage price effectively, in order to unlock new growth potential online.”
Amazon did not give its own top-line sales figure for the event, which was open to the company’s more than 200 million Prime subscribers. But the web giant described this year’s outing as “the biggest Prime Day” ever and offered other statistics and factoids that gave a sense of its scale, including:
- More than 300 million items were purchased.
- More than $1.7 billion was saved by Prime members.
- More than $3 billion was spent on the over 100 million small business items included in the Support Small Businesses to Win Big sweepstakes.
- Prime members bought more than 100,000 items a minute during Prime Day, with over 60,000 of those purchases made in the U.S.
- Among the bestselling items globally were premium beauty brands Laneige and NuFace, the Apple Watch Series 7, diapers and wipes from Pampers and The Honest Company and Levi’s apparel and accessories.
- In the U.S. over 1 million swimsuits and more than 1.2 million pairs of sunglasses were sold.
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