Amazon’s total sales on Amazon Prime Day, 2015–2020
Amazon.com Inc.’s sixth-annual Prime Day marked yet another record-breaking event for the retail giant, with sales surpassing last year’s 48-hour event by 45.2%, a Digital Commerce 360 analysis shows.
Digital Commerce 360 estimates Amazon’s sales on Prime Day hit $10.40 billion globally over the two-day period spanning Oct. 13 and Oct. 14, up from $7.16 billion during the 48-hour event in July 2019.
The best-selling products globally were, once again, Amazon’s own products: its Alexa-enabled Echo Dot and Fire Stick 4K. Other big sellers include iRobot Roomba Robot Vacuum, LifeStraw Personal Water Filter and LEGO Star Wars Stormtrooper Helmet.
Marketplace sales vs. Amazon’s own product sales
Marketplace sellers were the big winners this year, selling a record of more than $3.5 billion worth of goods during Prime Day, Amazon says. Sales of marketplace sellers’ products grew nearly 60% and—most notably—grew faster year over year than sales of Amazon’s own products, which includes its private-label goods, Amazon devices and products it buys from manufacturers to sell itself.
In the last few Prime Day events, Amazon’s marketplace sales as a share of total Prime Day sales have declined, according to Digital Commerce 360’s analysis, because Amazon heavily promotes its own products. Its devices often top the list of best sellers each year. We estimate marketplace sellers’ sales only account for about a third of Prime Day sales. This breakdown is different from Amazon’s annual gross merchandise sales, for which marketplace sellers accounted for approximately 60% in 2019.
This year, however, we project marketplace sales’ share grew to approximately 35% of Amazon’s Prime Day sales, up from 32% in 2019.
How does Prime Day compare with other shopping holidays?
Prime Day still lags behind larger shopping events such as the Cyber 5 holiday (the five-day shopping period beginning Thanksgiving Day) or Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Limited’s Singles’ Day event held on Nov. 11 each year. But when these sales events are broken down by day, Prime Day fares a little better. For example, given that Prime Day was a 48-hour sales event this year, we estimated that each of the two days generated roughly $5.20 billion in sales. That would mean Prime Day sales were ahead of online sales generated on Thanksgiving Day, and the Saturday and Sunday after Thanksgiving Day 2019.
Holiday purchases during Prime Day
Moving Amazon Prime Day to October from July likely pushed more shoppers to purchase holiday gifts during the sales event. An exclusive Digital Commerce 360 survey of 530 U.S. shoppers on Oct. 15 (the day after the event ended) shows that 62% of shoppers bought holiday gifts during Prime Day this year. Furthermore, 7% of respondents said all of their Prime Day purchases were holiday gifts.
Other retailers join in on Prime Day
Digital Commerce 360 researchers visited the sites of the top 100 North American online retailers ranked in the 2020 Top 1000 on Tuesday morning, when Prime Day kicked off, and tracked big promotions, marketing that played directly off of Amazon Prime Day, holiday gifting language or imagery and extended holiday return policies. Data collected shows a sizable number of retailers are capitalizing on the influx of web traffic from deal-seekers who are comparison-shopping with non-Amazon merchants by tempting consumers with big sales and nudging earlier gift buying.
51% of the top 100 online retailers offered widespread sales on Tuesday beyond normal promotions that are run year-round, according to Digital Commerce 360’s analysis.
Amazon loses traffic share during Prime Day event
Shoppers browsed more websites than just Amazon.com during Prime Day this year. A Digital Commerce 360 analysis of SimilarWeb website traffic data to the top 100 North American retail sites during Oct. 13-14 shows Amazon accounted for a smaller share of total traffic than 2019. This year, traffic to Amazon.com represented 40.6% of total traffic to the top 100 sites during the two-day period, down from 49.3% during Prime Day 2019 (July 15-16, 2019). That means consumers are starting to see Prime Day as a sales event for more retailers than just Amazon. This is a notable shift, as Prime Day could become a Black Friday-like discount holiday for all retailers if consumers continue to be trained that merchants other than Amazon also offer deals during the same period.
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