Amazon Prime Day Spurs Retail Black Friday In July

Amazon’s Prime Day (July 15) has primed retailers to keep the competition fierce by creating their own July sales events.

Walmart, for example, announced it will have an online sale Wednesday to combat Amazon’s event that’s designed to offer Prime members with exclusive deals starting at midnight. To mark its sale, Walmart is reducing its free shipping threshold from $50 to $35 for the rest of summer. It’s also applying sales to more than 2,000 items on Walmart.com, the retailer said.

Walmart didn’t specifically name Amazon, but its blog post about the sale did get in a few subtle jabs against the eCommerce giant.

“If you’ve shopped Walmart.com, you’ll know that every day is a special day where everyone has access to the same low prices we offer. We mean everyone: you, your neighbor, your boss, your best friend … all of whom are looking for the best price on the things they want and need. We’ve heard some retailers are charging $100 to get access to a sale. But the idea of asking customers to pay extra in order to save money just doesn’t add up for us,” Fernando Madeira, President and CEO of Walmart.com, wrote on Walmart’s blog yesterday (July 13).

This isn’t the first time Walmart has directly applied an Amazon-like model to its retail strategy. Walmart recently rolled out pilot testing of  ShippingPass, which is a $50 annual subscription that offers free and fast shipping (in under three days). Because it will launched in pilot mode, it won’t be widely available across the U.S. to start, but Walmart hasn’t said which locations will get the first test.

As for Amazon, the eCommerce giant will be using Prime Day to celebrate its 20th birthday. The global shopping event will offer exclusive deals to Prime members in the U.S., U.K., Spain, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, Canada and Austria. Prime Day will offer new deals every 10 minutes, including seven Deals of the Day, coined “lightning deals.”

But Walmart isn’t the only retailer who has introduced its own Black Friday-type sale in July. Target and Best Buy are also hosting their own sales during the month — sales similar to ones that each retailer has hosted for several years now. Target already kicked off its own model by hosting “Black Friday In July” sales every Friday of the month. Best Buy has its own similar sale going on July 24-25.

As the major retailers attempt to keep up, at least one analyst suggested that Walmart’s move asserts that it’s serious about being an eCommerce leader.

“Amazon has kind of turned the tables on Walmart,” Brian Yarbrough, consumer research analyst with Edward Jones, told USA Today. “They’re the biggest in the world and the best. Walmart’s problem is they’re struggling to grow traffic in their stores. They’re trying to gain new customers and show that they can be a force online.”

Walmart has made it clear during its previous two earnings calls with analysts that investing in eCommerce has been at top of mind. Walmart has plans in place to leverage its eCommerce efforts by offering an omnichannel experience by merging its physical store, online, pick up and mobile efforts to enable a multi-channel shopping experience for its customers.

“The heaviest investment in eCommerce will come over the next 18 to 24 months, as we further integrate the shopping experience, appealing to our customer’s desire for convenience, access, and assortment. We then expect to see operating losses start to moderate at the end of that period. We continue to seek the right balance between sales growth and profitability for eCommerce,” Walmart CFO Charles Holley said during the company’s Q4 earnings call in February.

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