Amazon Prime Day Sales Outpace 2023 Event in First Hours

The first hours of Amazon’s Prime Day reportedly saw sales outpacing those of last year’s event.

During the first seven hours of the event on Tuesday (July 16), sales were up almost 12%, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing data from Momentum Commerce, which manages Amazon sales on behalf of brands and generates about $7 billion in annual sales on the platform.

Market research firm Numerator said that its sample of households found that the average household spent about $100 during the event, as of noon New York time, according to the report.

Predicting sales for all retailers on the platform across the entire two-day event, Adobe expects to see an 11% increase to $14 billion, while EMarketer forecasts a 5.5% rise to $8.2 billion, the report said.

“Consumers continue to spend, but they do so strategically, which can benefit a sale like Prime Day,” Sky Canaves, an analyst at EMarketer, said in the report.

Amazon achieved its highest-ever sales volumes during last year’s Prime Day event, with 375 million items sold worldwide and Prime members saving more than $2.5 billion on millions of deals across the Amazon stores in July 2023, the company said at the time.

That Prime Day also marked a milestone as the biggest event ever for independent sellers within Amazon’s marketplace. The majority of these sellers were small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), and their sales growth on Amazon’s platform during the event surpassed that of Amazon’s own retail business.

When announcing this year’s event, which is the 10th ever, Doug Herrington, CEO of Worldwide Amazon Stores, said in an April 26 post on LinkedIn: “We are working hard and inventing new ways to pack even more great savings into the event this year.”

With the rising popularity of Amazon’s Prime Day, other retailers have sought to hold their own among bargain-seeking shoppers by joining the deals days battle.

Among the competitors are Target Circle Week, which ran July 7-13 and was open to all members of its free loyalty program, and Walmart Deals, which ran July 8-11 and was open to everyone, not just members. Walmart also held an earlier members-only event.