Online sales promotions will be rampant next week as more major retail chains announce special promotions that will coincide Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Day sale July 12.
Spokeswomen for J.C. Penney Co. Inc. (No. 33 in the Internet Retailer 2016 Top 500 Guide) and Kohl’s Corp. (No. 19) confirmed the retail chains will run special sales.
J.C. Penney will run a sale dubbed “Penney Palooza.” The sale will run Monday through Tuesday, with the Tuesday portion of the sale coinciding with Prime Day. Likewise, Kohl’s will be running a string of daily deals from Sunday through Thursday of next week online and in store focusing on products in the active apparel, footwear, summer essentials and home categories.
There’s good reason why other online retailers are looking to join the hoopla surrounding Prime Day, which Amazon started last year to celebrate its 20th anniversary and offers special discounts to Prime members. Prime Day was the fourth busiest day of the year in terms of e-commerce traffic for 25 top U.S. retailers, trailing only Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Thanksgiving, according to digital analytics firm SimilarWeb. Amazon (No. 1) reported its own sales on Prime Day 2015 were 18% higher than sales on Black Friday 2014.
J.C. Penney’s Penney Palooza sale will offer online shoppers free shipping on orders of $49 or more—the threshold is normally $99—and “compelling online-only deals on our assortment of private and national brands,” the spokeswoman says, declining to specify a discount range or which product categories it will most heavily discount. Last year on Prime Day, J.C. Penney hosted a one-day sale offering an extra 10-25% off select items. It also lowered the free shipping threshold to $49.
But not all major retail chains are planning to run atypical sales. A Target Corp. spokeswoman confirmed it will stick with its previously planned promotions calendar next week.
“We are generally focused on offering compelling promotions based on our guests shopping mindset throughout the entire year,” she says. “In the next few weeks, we know our guests will begin to shop for back to school, so our July/August promotions are focused on giving them deals on supplies, backpacks, apparel and more.” Target is No. 22 in the 2016 Internet Retailer Top 500.
Meanwhile, online marketplace Jet.com, which launched about a week after Prime Day last year and has been viewed as a potential competitor to Amazon, will not hold a sales event Tuesday to counter Prime Day, a spokesman says. Rather, Jet will run its own promotion to celebrate its one-year anniversary later this month, but no further details are available, he says.
