Amazon said it sold more than 175 million items during this year's Prime Day shopping event, more than its sales for the past Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.
The online retailer, which didn't disclose an actual sales figure in the press release, called the two-day sale across 18 countries its "largest shopping event in Amazon history." Last year's Prime Day only ran for 36 hours.
It also said that on Monday and Tuesday it sold more Amazon devices — like the Echo Dot, the Fire TV Stick and Alexa Voice Remote — over a two-day period than it ever has before.
A "record number" of Prime members in the U.S., which pay an annual fee of $119 to get perks like free shipping and access to Prime Day, shopped the event this year, Amazon said. It said it added more new Prime members on July 15 than it ever has before on a single day. And it said almost as many people signed up again on July 16.
Amazon disclosed for the first time last April that it had more than 100 million paying Prime members worldwide. It hasn't provided an update to that figure since then.
"We want to thank Prime members all around the world," Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement. "Members purchased millions of Alexa-enabled devices, received tens of millions of dollars in savings by shopping from Whole Foods Market and bought more than $2 billion of products from independent small and medium-sized businesses. Huge thank you to Amazonians everywhere who made this day possible for customers."
Amazon has recently started rolling out a one-day shipping option across the country for Prime members, and it called this year's Prime Day "the fastest ever." Previously, the default shipping option for Prime members was for two days.
Amazon said it sold over 100,000 laptops, 200,000 televisions, 300,000 headphones, 350,000 luxury beauty products and more than 1 million toys on Prime Day this year.
In the U.S., it said top-selling items were the LifeStraw Personal Water Filter, the Instant Pot DUO60 and 23andMe Health + Ancestry kits.
A boost to all
Prime Day 2019 also delivered a boost to sales for Amazon's rivals, many of which have been touting their own deals all week to compete.
The 48-hour shopping extravaganza gave large retailers a boost in online sales of 68%, on average, according to Adobe Analytics, which measures the transactions of 80 of the top 100 internet retailers in the U.S. Adobe classifies large retailers as companies that make more than $1 billion in annual revenues.
Niche retailers, which Adobe classifies as those that bring in less than $5 million in annual sales, saw a 28% lift in digital sales, according to the firm. Last year, niche retailers saw a decrease in sales, Adobe said.
Walmart, Target, eBay, Macy's and Best Buy have all been running deals this week. Target pushed discounts for its in-house home goods brands. Walmart is expected to run deals, on everything from Google Home smart speakers to Instant Pots, through Wednesday.
"Prime Day has become an indisputable summer shopping holiday, greatly benefiting online retailers that can attract consumers to their site through compelling email campaigns or offering value-add services like buy online, pick up in-store," said Jason Woosley, vice president of Adobe's Commerce Product division.
Amazon's website also experienced a major glitch during Prime Day 2018, potentially giving rivals an even bigger boost when shoppers couldn't order through Amazon. But that wasn't the case this year.
Catchpoint, which monitors websites' performance rates, said Amazon "did an amazing job staying technically available and loading fast under heavy traffic during Prime Days."
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/17/amazon-announces-prime-day-2019-results.html
2019-07-17 13:33:28Z
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