Amazon on Thursday announced its first Big Spring Sale. The six-day promotion will run from Wednesday through March 25. Unlike past big promotional events, sales will be available for all customers. However, Prime members can access exclusive deals during the six-day event.
New deals will drop daily during the event. They will include up to 50% off select beauty, sports and outdoors equipment and 40% off select electronics, home products and spring apparel. The company said discounts will also be offered on lawn and garden, cleaning and Amazon Echo and Kindle devices.
The event is part of a recent string of multi-day sales including Prime Day, which is typically offered in July, and Prime Big Deal Days in the fall. When asked if the Big Spring Sale would become an annual event, a company spokesperson said that it didn't want to speculate on future plans.
“Amazon has found that promotional events are a great way to stimulate demand and to create a mini-boom in sales,” Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, told Retail Dive in an email. “They also help to drive new subscriptions into the Prime ecosystem.”
Amazon’s multi-day sales often inspire rival retailers to offer competing promotions. Last fall, for example, Walmart, Target and Best Buy all offered pre-holiday sales in response to Amazon’s October Prime member sale. Saunders said it’s “inevitable that other retailers will jump on Amazon’s bandwagon by holding their own similar events or offering some deals over the period.”
Last summer, Amazon said that the first day of its Prime Day sale was the single largest sales day in its history. The e-commerce giant didn't provide revenue numbers for the two-day promotion. However, it was a record event for U.S. e-commerce overall. Along with competing sales at other retailers, Prime Day last year helped push U.S. e-commerce up 6% year over year on July 11 and 6.4% on July 12, according to Adobe Analytics.
Customers bought over 300 million items during Prime Day, the company said in its 2023 proxy statement. And last fall, Amazon said “hundreds of millions of items” were sold during its Prime Big Deal Days sale in October.
“The retail market remains reasonable, but growth has slowed since last year and consumers are becoming more cautious and frugal. Against that backdrop, even a successful retailer like Amazon needs to make more effort,” Saunders said.
