Another Record Day with Over 100 Million Products Purchased Globally

On July 18, Amazon announced that its fourth annual Prime Day shopping event was once again the “biggest hopping event” in Amazon’s history, with sales surpassing those of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and previous Prime Day events. According to the announcement, Prime members worldwide purchased more than 100 million products during this year’s Prime Day shopping event, although the company did not disclose any top-line figure on revenues generated during the event. Last year, Amazon reported that Prime Day 2017 grew by more than 60% compared to the previous year’s event. In an announcement on July 17—before the end of the promotional event—however, the company reported that SMEs worldwide had surpassed $1 billion in sales on Amazon during Prime Day 2018.

A Record Day for Prime Membership

In the July 18 announcement, Amazon disclosed that a record number of Prime members shopped across 17 countries and that more customers subscribed to Prime membership during the first day of Prime Day 2018 than on any previous day in Amazon history. Prime members are a key driving force behind Amazon’s impressive growth, and a major objective of Prime Day is to encourage shoppers to join the Prime membership program, which currently costs $119 per year (or $12.99 per month) in the US. Prime members tend to be higher-value customers for Amazon versus nonmember shoppers, as paying a membership fee tends to lock in customers, who look to get their money’s worth from the free shipping and other services Amazon Prime membership offers. In reporting for fiscal 2017, Amazon disclosed for the first time that the number of paid Prime subscribers had exceeded 100 million globally.

Prime Day Extended to Whole Foods Market

For the first time this year, Amazon took Prime Day to brick-and-mortar stores, by extending the deals to US Prime members shopping at Whole Foods Market, which Amazon acquired in 2017. Organic strawberries proved to be the best-selling deal for Prime members shopping at the grocery retailer, the company announced.

Amazon’s Own Electronics Confirmed as Best Sellers

Prime Day 2018 was the biggest event ever for Amazon’s own consumer electronics products, according to the company, reporting that customers had purchased millions of Fire TV devices on Amazon globally during Prime Day. The company also stated that this year’s even was the best ever for: Echo devices with screens Echo Show and Echo Spot, Amazon devices for kids, Fire TV devices and Kindle e-readers on Amazon globally. As in previous years, the company continued to focus promotions on its own electronics during this year’ event. In the US, Amazon announced record sales for Toshiba 4K Ultra HD Fire TV Edition and smart home devices, in particular the Ring Video Doorbell Pro and The Amazon Cloud Cam, which became the best-selling security camera deal in the company’s history. Among Amazon’s own brands, the top sellers in the US during the promotional event were the Stone & Beam ceramic geometric table lamp, Presto! Ultra Soft toilet paper, Daily Ritual’s jersey short-sleeve V-neck t-shirt dress for women and the AmazonBasics pre-seasoned cast iron skillet. Figure 1 lists other best-selling products during Prime Day 2018, by country, as reported by Amazon.

Source: Amazon

On the first day of the promotion at around 3 p.m. ET, Amazon’s US website suffered a series of glitches. These were, however, quickly fixed and appeared not to have hampered the ability of US consumers to shop and did not compromise the success of this year’s Prime Day. This year, Prime Day in the US started on July 16 at 12 p.m. PT/3 p.m. ET and ran through to July 17, for a total of 36 hours of promotional events. This was six more hours of events than for Prime Day 2017, which was 30 hours long and started later during the day, at 6 p.m. PT/9 p.m. ET. This was the first Prime Day for members in Australia, Singapore, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.