The 2-day shopping event may have been been the first since 2015 to not return growth.
Reports indicate that Amazon Prime Day 2020 has been a decidedly more lacklustre affair than analysts had predicted, with website traffic data and muted language surrounding the event indicating the retailer’s disappointment.
It has been suggested that sales may have been affected by Amazon’s decision to move Prime Day, which usually takes place in July, to October 13th and 14th, which some experts warned may cannibalise Christmas sales. Elsewhere, the ‘shop local’ message put forth by some campaign and industry groups may have had an impact. Web traffic, according to SimilarWeb, also remained flat this year; last year traffic increased 8% for Prime Day.
While Amazon does not release detailed figures of its Prime Day events, it has celebrated the “biggest day ever” or “largest shopping event in Amazon history” every year since the event first launched in 2015. This year however, Amazon has instead focused on the performance of its third-party sellers, which it says generated more than $3.5b in sales this year.
“Based on the language of Amazon’s press releases and SimilarWeb data, it appears that Prime Day 2020 was not the ‘biggest day ever,’” Citi analysts said.
Amazon has come under continued fire this year for a host of reasons, including perceived tax avoidance, the hiking of fees to cover the government’s new digital tax initiative, worker safety during the pandemic, and the continued sale of unsafe toys via its third-party marketplace.
