Dive Brief:
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Prime Day set a new record, as shoppers spent $14.2 billion on July 16 and July 17 across various e-commerce sites, up 11% from last year, according to Adobe Analytics data. Mobile shopping drove almost half (49.2%) of that, reaching $7 billion — 18.6% more than last year.
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Electronics, apparel and furniture, which normally drive nearly half of e-commerce, have seen low single-digit growth so far this year, but Prime Day was a catalyst for those categories, Adobe said. Over the two days, electronics sales rose 61% compared to average daily sales in June. Back-to-school was also a factor: Sales of backpacks, lunchboxes, stationery and other school and office supplies rose 216% across both days compared to June, and children’s apparel sales rose 165%.
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For non-Amazon retailers, global online sales dropped 1% year over year in the first half of day two, but in the U.S. rose 8%, according to data from 1.5 billion shoppers across Salesforce Commerce Cloud and other Salesforce platforms. On day one, global sales for non-Amazon digital retailers were flat, and rose 3% in the U.S., Salesforce said.
Dive Insight:
Prime Day has always been about discounts, and by now shoppers have come to expect a mid-summer sales event.
“The consumer is basically trained at this point. It seems that there's Black Friday in July, and so people hold out to see what's going to happen around Prime Day for the brands that they're looking to shop,” Michael Wieder, co-founder and president of baby supplies brand Lalo, said by phone.
Lalo sells via its own site as well as through Amazon, and sales spiked during the sale’s two days, especially on Amazon, Wieder said. Shoppers were most active at the very start of the sale, and toward the end, he said. The brand is keeping its summer sale going through Monday.
The Prime Day burst is likely to buoy online retail sales, which rose 4.8% year over year in June and 6.4% in May, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Adobe estimates that online spending will grow 8.2% in July to $84.4 billion. For the year up to the end of September, Adobe expects online spending to be up 7.3%.
This year during the event, more consumers avoided big-ticket items, and fewer made multiple purchases, according to Numerator data. Discounts were steep, according to Adobe: Over the two days, electronics peaked at 23% off list price, compared to 14% off last year; apparel was 20% off compared to 12% last year; home goods and furniture were 16% off compared to 9% last year; televisions were 16% off compared to 5% last year and computers were 11% off compared to 8% last year.
E-commerce prices have dropped for nearly two years now, and were down 4.2% year over year in June, according to the Adobe Digital Price Index, which tracks online prices across 18 product categories. Adjusted for inflation, topline spending would be even greater, according to that research.
Shoppers turned to buy now, pay later across the two days for 7.6% of their online spending, amounting to $1.08 billion this year, up 16.4%, Adobe found.
Amazon itself provided few details about its sale, except to say that it was its “biggest Prime Day shopping event ever, with record sales and more items sold during the two-day event than any previous Prime Day event.”
