(Note: you can also hear me talk about Amazon Prime Day on Thursday’s edition of KUT’s “Texas Standard.” The segment starts at 17:50.)
Well, that was certainly a thing that Amazon did.
In this June 30, 2011 file photo, a United Parcel Service driver delivers packages from Amazon.com in Palo Alto, Calif. Amazon aimed for Christmas in July with its much-hyped “Prime Day” sale on Wednesday, July 15, 2015, but some shoppers were disappointed by the offerings. Credit: Paul Sakuma / ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE
Last week, on July 15, Amazon.com declared for its 20th anniversary “Prime Day,” a completely self-made holiday of deals it likened beforehand to Black Friday, but better.
Never mind that in recent years, Black Friday as a shopping bonanza has come to be known as a sinkhole many avoid because the limited number of items available at a deep discount just aren’t worth the hassle.
If you only followed Prime Day on social media, you might think Amazon's effort was a complete disaster. Snarky Tweeters (myself included)
derided the mishmash of Lightning Deal products as must-avoids while tech and shopping blogs gleefully listed the worst items for sale. Some customers complained that they couldn't complete their purchases on Amazon's site while others said that the items they sought sold out too quickly, such as 4K television sets and Amazon's own voice-activated Echo speaker, which was discounted to $129.
Given the reaction, you might think Amazon’s reputation took a ding and that the disappointment might cause some long-term brand damage. But in the short term, at least for Amazon, Prime Day appears to have been an enormous win. It moved items that would have have otherwise sat in warehouses, spurred some to subscribe to the company’s $99-a-year Prime service and attracted to Amazon’s site many more customers than usual, even if many chose to take a pass on the merchandise.
The company's insistence on comparing Prime Day with Black Friday may have been misguided — one online retailer's sales versus sales from all major online and brick-and-mortar stores seems like a weird comparison — but in comparison with itself, Amazon says it broke records. The company said in a press release that it sold 18 percent more on Prime Day than on 2014's Black Friday, at a rate of 398 items per second.
“After yesterday’s results, we’ll definitely be doing this again,” said Greg Greeley, vice president of Amazon Prime, who apparently didn’t get the memo from Twitter that Prime Day was a big bust.
Those don’t seem like failure numbers. Amazon is, as the old saying goes, laughing all the way to the bank. For my own part, I spent $140 ($129 + tax) on Amazon’s Echo speaker, an item I had my eye on and only needed a price drop to justify. I passed over every other deal, but with one purchase, I was part of the wave of people feeding into Amazon’s frenzy.
What's most surprising about Prime Day is that after 20 years, people still underestimate Amazon's power in the marketplace. Prime Day caused Wal-Mart to play along with an all-day sale, kept deal sites hopping all week and became a media-blitz of an event in the middle of prime (so to speak) non-shopping season.
Amazon can take all the jokes and then some. They’re walking away with truckloads of money and new Prime members, so why not laugh along?
(Full disclosure: I made jokes, too, see below)
About the Author
