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50 Million Americans Are Queuing Up For Amazon Prime Day 2019: What To Expect

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Amazon Prime Day 2019 just got bigger, running for a full two-days from midnight PT July 15 through July 16. Featuring more than one million deals for Prime members in 18 countries, with United Arab Emirates added this year, Amazon will also offer 30-day free trial Prime memberships to those who haven’t ponied up the $119 annual membership fee yet.

After only four years, Amazon Prime Day has become the biggest shopping event for Amazon after the five-day 2018 Thanksgiving, Black Friday through Cyber Monday holiday kickoff weekend. Last year that weekend generated over 180 million items sold, breaking all company records. But Prime Day 2018 wasn’t far behind with more than 100 million items sold over that year’s day-and-a-half event.

It’s not hard to imagine that this year’s Prime Days will get close to the record performance of last year’s Thanksgiving weekend holiday, considering that Amazon suffered embarrassing technical snafus during the 2018 event.

Also this year will only be the second where Whole Foods customers can get in on the Prime action, with a 10% discount off sale items and deep discounts on other products at the store. As a result, Whole Foods is likely to play a bigger role in this year’s Prime Day event than last.

While Amazon is reticent about actual revenue numbers for Prime Day, Internet Retailer estimated that Amazon took in $4.2 billion globally during last year’s event, which was a whopping 74% more than sales in 2017, by their estimation. In advance of Prime Day 2018, Coresight Research estimated sales would grow more modestly at 40% to reach $3.4 billion, from the estimated $2.4 billion take in 2017. To date, Coresight hasn’t weighed in on expected results for 2019.

Looking at what to expect for Amazon Prime Days this year, Feedvisor found that about half of the 101 million U.S. Prime members plan to shop this year. Another study (see below) pegs participation even higher, 76%.

And these estimates don’t even include the number of new members who will join the party too. Last year’s Prime Day was reported by the company to be its biggest day ever for new Prime members, though it did not reveal how many signed up. But to place that in context, Hitwise estimates Amazon signs up 200,000 new Prime members per month.

For a look at what Amazon Prime Day 2019 will hold for the company, its partners and competitors, Profitero, the international e-commerce performance analytics company, conducted a survey of 1,000 U.S. and U.K. Prime members and studied last year’s analytics to make these predictions:

Prime members are anxiously anticipating this year’s event

Admittedly, what people say they are going to do in surveys often differs from what they actually do, but Profitero’s survey is even more bullish than Feedvisor on the number of Prime members looking forward to shopping on Prime Day 2019.

In its survey conducted in May 2019, Profitero found 76% of U.S. and 67% of U.K. Prime members are going to be clicking on the deals Amazon will offer there. The difference may be due to the timing of the surveys, with Feedvisor’s conducted in February and Profitero’s closer to the event.

But under either company’s scenario, it means Amazon will have a monster-sized audience glued to its site over the two days.

Further, over half of Prime customers who bought last year (56% in U.S. and 53% in U.K.) said they expect to spend more this year, according to Profitero. That’s because they haven’t been disappointed in their past purchases and believe that Prime Day deals live up to their promises.

Brands that participate in Prime Day promotions will get a big lift

Based on results from last year, Profitero says brands that participate in Prime Day promotions can expect to see a 3-4X sales lift over the two days. But other brands, most especially those that have captured an Amazon Choice or Best Seller designation, even if they don’t officially participate in Prime Day promotions, are also expected to get a boost just from the increased traffic on the site.

While the brands that offer the biggest discounts, in the 41-50% range, will get the lion’s share of the gains, even brands that offer a modest discount in the 20% range can expect 2X lift in sales.

Further, Profitero finds Prime Day promotions can extend a brand’s results beyond the sales days, finding, “66% of products that saw a lift in traffic during Prime Day 2018 benefited from the Prime Day ‘halo effect’ that lasted at least two weeks after the event.”

Fellow Forbes.com contributor Paul Armstrong gives a run down on the specials on offer this year.

Excellent opportunities for all consumer goods categories

Electronics are a perennial best-selling category on Amazon Prime Day, with over 70% of U.S. and U.K. consumers planning to make electronic purchases. But this year is expected to be a particularly strong one for grocery. Roughly one-in-four U.S. Prime members and one-in-five U.K. members plan to make a grocery purchase.

Other categories that will attract the most shoppers include apparel, though it has significantly greater appeal for U.S. Prime members (58%) than U.K. shoppers (31%); home goods where more than half will be looking; health and beauty (47% for U.S. and 40% U.K.); toys and games (about 40% in both countries) and tools and home improvement where 35% of U.S. DIYers plan purchases, as compared with 27% of U.K. Prime members.

Amazon Prime Day will lift other retailers’ boats

Other retailers get benefits from all the Amazon Prime Day hype as well. It gets consumers jazzed to snag great deals, with about one-third of the Prime members surveyed by Profitero saying they will also look around for other online retailers’ specials. And more than half say they will compare prices on other sites before clicking the Amazon buy-button.

Not to let Amazon steal all the thunder, Target will run its own “deal days” over the same two-day Prime period and Ebay will be hosting special discount sales as well. In addition, they are locked and loaded with even deeper “crash sales” offerings, in hopeful anticipation that Amazon’s site will crash again this year as it did last, reports CNBC.

And chief Amazon rival, Walmart will get out in front of Prime Day on June 14 with special price Rollbacks that will run a day longer, through July 17, according to CNET. But these specials will only be available on Walmart.com, not in the stores.

But Amazon will leave competitors in the dust

Amazon Prime Day 2019 is sure not to disappoint its customers or the company. So far this year Amazon’s been riding high, as it just vaulted over Walmart to become the world’s largest retailer, according to the Forbes Global 2000 of the world’s biggest public companies, based upon composite score of revenues, profits, assets and market value.

Amazon’s continued dominance in e-commerce and throughout all retail is further guaranteed. By year end, Feedvisor reports that Amazon will capture a 52.4% share of the total U.S. e-commerce market, rising from 48% in 2018. That will translate into more than a 5% share of the total U.S. online and in-store retail market.

However, those predictions may well prove too conservative after this year’s extended two-day Prime Day event.

Note: After publication Walmart clarified that the June 14-17 Rollbacks only apply to purchases made on Walmart.com.

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