Prime Day is no longer exclusive to Amazon.

Is Amazon's massively fabricated shopping holiday reaching its peak?

Was last week's Target Circle Week enjoyable for you? or the July sales at Walmart? Deals For You Days were held at TikTok Shop from July 9 to July 11, and Temu Week, which ends on July 18, offers up to 90% off on select items. Amazon Prime Day is coming up this week. All of this occurs right after the Fourth of July holiday sales at stores, which turned the entire month into a haze of deals. Shopping is always necessary, therefore now is the right time to do it.

This isn't an accident at all. As was the case when big-box stores abruptly said they were decreasing grocery prices to fight inflation, responding to competitors' actions is standard business practice. Because no retailer wants to be the one selling an air purifier at full price when Amazon has it for 25% off, July has turned into a season known for big blowout deals.

The well-known Amazon Prime Day offer is evidence of the company's immense strength in multiple ways: It created a brand-new holiday that is now observed twice a year and that people look forward to each summer and autumn. Even with a Megan Thee Stallion rapping about how much she loves Prime, it's still the biggest sales event of the season, but rivals are working hard to take some of the limelight away from it. According to a recent analysis by market research company eMarketer, Amazon will lose ground to other online retailers in the three years that its Prime Day promotion is held between July 16 and 17.This illustrates how other businesses have been able to attract people to their physical locations. Prime Day is still a huge 48-hour sales event, but it's no longer exclusive to Amazon.

Prime Day then and now

 On July 15, 2015, Prime Day made its debut as a one-day deal that was touted as greater than Black Friday and coincided with Amazon's 20th anniversary. It was a shrewd marketing move on Amazon's part to carve out its own space in the midst of summer rather than compete just during recognised holiday sale seasons. (That same summer, Walmart swiftly revealed its own July deal).

Additionally, Prime Day served as a large advertisement for the Prime subscription, which 40 million users had enrolled in by 2015, as reported by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP), a market research organisation. There are currently 180 million Prime members in the US, somewhat more than half of the nation's entire population, according to CIRP estimates. This country's devoted Prime members contributed to Amazon's transformation from a digital giant to a classic example of an unproductive business for many years. During the first quarter of 2024, the corporation made $10.4 billion in profit.

Despite the fact that the initial Prime Day sales were reportedly less successful than anticipated (despite selling a lot of Fire TV Sticks, which are still a Prime Day mainstay), Amazon nevertheless made around $900 million in sales that day. Ever since, Prime Day sales have seen customers give Amazon ever-larger sums of money; in July of last year, the record was $12.7 billion over the course of 48 hours.

Principal analyst at eMarketer Sky Canaves states, "I think Amazon is largely sticking to its tried-and-true Prime Day playbook this year." This entails making attractive offers that encourage more people to join up for Prime. This year's largest discounts include invite-only offers from well-known firms that are only accessible to Prime members: A Peloton bike is thirty percent off, a Sony headphone set is fifty-five percent off, and a Citizen chronograph watch is sixty percent off.

Additionally, a lot of cosmetics should be on sale. "This year, there are more luxury brands on Amazon, particularly in the beauty categories," notes Neil Saunders, managing director of retail at analytics company GlobalData. Clinique, for instance, only recently joined the ranks of well-known cosmetic brands like Dermalogica and Laneige that are already offered on the website.

Is there ever a sale when there's always one?

Amazon brought a brand-new calendar event to American customers' lives with Prime Day. The issue is that sales get less exciting when everyone is having a deal in the middle of July.

According to Michael Levin, a cofounder of Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, Prime Day "used to be bigger." According to him, "people got a little more acclimated to it" as a result of Amazon adding a second Prime Day event in October of 2022 and all of its rivals adopting the Prime Day strategy. "In general, I believe that the initial excitement has faded," says Josh Lowitz, cofounder of CIRP.

That acclimatisation may be the reason for the sharp slowdown in Prime Day sales growth. The income from Prime Day in 2022 was 6.7% more than that of the previous year – a moderate but steady growth.However, a Capital One Shopping study from 2018 states that the sales event generated an astounding 78 percent more money than it did in the previous year. Additionally, searches for "Prime Day" spiked around July 2018, according to data from Google Trends.

Part of the fervour around Prime Day has subsided, and that is partially Amazon's fault. In addition to hosting many Prime Days annually, the company also hosted a significant spring sales event that was accessible to all consumers, not just Prime members, and has started holding more modest, category-specific events. According to Canaves, "these extra sales may have a slight dampening effect on Prime Day."

Having more sales means that Amazon can profit from smaller but more regular purchases on its site, whether of beauty items or health supplements, which have a convenient auto-replenish purchasing option, so it presumably doesn't mind too much. Although it's not quite Prime Day as of this writing, Amazon is already offering a slew of "early" Prime Day offers, making it harder to determine exactly when the sale begins and finishes. Amazon frequently offers discounts on its items, with millions of price changes occurring every day, even when there aren't any significant deals.Currently available for $297 instead of $460, the Le Creuset Dutch Oven in Cerise is not designated as a Prime Day offer. Instead than waiting for a sales event to start, it's really simple to set up an alert for price decreases on websites like Camelcamelcamel or Keepa. Keepa reports that there are an average of six price reductions for these Levi jeans, eight price reductions for the Coway air purifier, and an astounding 32 price reductions for the Premier Protein Shakes, which were a best-seller on the October 2023 Prime Day. It's okay if you miss a nice deal. Simply give it a few minutes.

Everyone’s an Amazon competitor

 Online merchants have sprung into action to provide their own version of Prime Day, and it's obvious that Amazon is keeping an eye on the upstarts who are fast approaching it. According to a recent story from The Information, the American e-commerce behemoth is following Temu's lead and introducing a lower-priced clothing and home products division with delayed shipment straight from China.

For a very long time, Amazon has been associated with convenience: you can order anything with just one click and have them delivered, often the same day. Offering clients a new, slower shipping option makes logical, but it also represents a partial concession on the part of Amazon, who may realise that customers don't always want lightning-fast delivery. When it comes to pricing, Chinese e-commerce businesses like Temu that are expanding in the US have an advantage. Whatever you purchase is probably coming from a Chinese merchant regardless of whether you shop on Temu or Amazon.

Making shopping fun is another area where Amazon's rivals have an advantage. According to CIRP's Lowitz, "We like to say that Amazon is a better place to buy things than to shop for things." Amazon is a great site to shop if you know what you want to buy. It's dependable and simple. It's not the best place to find brand-new, eye-catching merchandise. To locate the greatest deals on Amazon, start by browsing shopping blogs, Reddit comments, Wirecutter, and TikTok influencers.Temu and the more recent TikTok Shop have an advantage in this regard. Canaves notes that Chinese e-commerce merchants are typically "very discovery-driven, rather than search-driven." Amazon has attempted to bring some of the social purchasing elements of TikTok to their site. Livestream shopping and an Inspire scrolling feed of shoppable items are two examples of these attempts, but they haven't exactly taken off.

Even though Amazon is by far the largest online retailer in the US, it still has to be concerned about other, much smaller ones. Sales are being impacted by Temu, TikTok Shop, and Shein, the three recent market entries, according to Canaves.

In recent decades, Amazon has grown into an unstoppable power. But, according to Lowitz, preserving its position as the Everything Store may be the biggest obstacle the business now confronts. Although Amazon offers everything, can it compete with Shein in the ultra-cheap quick fashion market? Exceeding Wayfair in terms of furniture? Superior to Chewy in pet products? superior to Walmart in terms of groceries?

Even if one rival may not have a significant impact on Amazon's hegemony overall, they do add up. One example of this is the development of Prime Day, which, although started by Amazon, is now observed on the first Monday of every retail month.