Amazon Primed For Early Black Friday

Black Friday is coming a week early — at least for Amazon Prime members.

Amazon announced earlier this month that it is kicking off this year’s holiday season with an early launch of a Black Friday Deals store, exclusively targeted at boosting its Prime membership base. Now, that store will soon be open.

Amazon announced yesterday (Nov. 18) that its holiday deals will kick off this Friday, Nov. 20. Amazon will be offering daily deals throughout the week leading up to Black Friday, and then will continue with more deals starting at midnight on Thanksgiving.

The eCommerce behemoth is providing its Prime members early access to the majority of Amazon’s 30,000 “lightning deals,” as the deals will open up to Prime members half an hour before non-Prime members have access. The company also announced a 30 percent discount for Prime members on jewelry products from brands such as Kenneth Cole, Nine West and Anne Klein, among others.

“Holiday shopping has become synonymous with deal shopping, and this year, we’ve added new and convenient ways for customers to save while finding special gifts for everyone on their list,” said Alexandre Gagnon, country manager for Amazon.ca. “With Prime Early Access, we are providing our most frequent shoppers with a first look at some of the best deals from Amazon.ca this holiday season and all year.”

In July this year, the company held “Amazon Prime Day” on its 20th anniversary — an attempt at boosting sales and Prime membership. While the sales on Prime Day broke Amazon’s 2014 Black Friday sales record, the company faced a serious backlash from consumers for limiting the availability of high-quality products and keeping the inventory of the best deals scarce.

While Amazon Prime has been its bread and butter to secure more loyal customers, the perks of same-day shipping, and one-hour shipping in some cities has been Amazon’s way of with competing against physical retail — especially this holiday season.

While physical retailers look to upset Amazon’s business model by providing shoppers with something they can’t get online, Amazon is attempting to do the same by giving into what shoppers want most.

This means providing the shopping experience with the option to shop when they want, where they want, and how they want, as well as the ability to get those goods delivered in a speedy fashion. And with the holiday season upon us, Amazon hopes its same-day delivery play could be the key to delivering an in-store experience — all without having to go to the store, of course.

“Prime Now is an absolute game changer for the holidays,” Josh Neblett, CEO of Etailz (an online retailer that sells on marketplaces like Amazon), told Bloomberg in a recent interview. “It opens the door to a whole new group of on-demand customers.”