Are Two Prime Day Sales Events Enough For Amazon?

Amazon
AMZN
.com, fresh off last month’s record-setting Prime Day sales event, said it will run Prime Big Deal Days in the U.S., Canada and 17 other countries in October.

Details on the promotion, limited to Prime members, are practically non-existent as Amazon has not indicated the depth and breadth of deals that will be available or the exact dates the sale will be run.

Big Deal Days mark the second time Amazon has run two major Prime sales promotions in a calendar year. Amazon last year ran its Prime Early Access Sale in October following its July flagship event.

Amazon reported that July 11, the first day of the two-day Prime Day promotion, was the biggest sales day in the company’s history as many of its 200 million subscribers found deals on items sold by the e-tail giant and third-party sellers on its marketplace.

Adobe Analytics pegged Amazon’s Prime Day revenues in the U.S. at $12.7 billion, a 6.1% increase over the 2022 event. Amazon was likely not the only retailer during the Prime Day period with Target
TGT
, Walmart
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and others running overlapping promotions in July.

“I think the biggest news of this whole cycle outside of Amazon itself is Walmart decided to counter-program directly against Amazon with Walmart+ week. Last year, they had a Walmart+ weekend in June. It was off-cycle for Prime Day,” Andrew Lipsman, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence, recently said on eMarketer’s “Behind the Numbers: Reimagining Retail” podcast.

The continuing success of Prime Day has led to speculation that it may make strategic marketing sense for Amazon to expand its sales event calendar.

“I think the answer is yes, eventually. So what is one that could happen? They’ve got three times a year, summer, fall and winter holiday (Black Friday and Cyber Monday) already covered. So to me, the obvious one is in the spring.”

Lipsman said a spring home improvement event could be timed for mid-to-late April to include home and garden products promoted by Home Depot, Lowe’s, Wayfair and other retailers.

“They (Amazon) could build it around the home and garden category. Outdoor furniture can be popular during this. I also think Amazon has a lot of great flagship electronics for the smart home and protecting your home security ring doorbell things of that nature,” said Lipsman.