Prime Day, Amazon’s deals-driven online shopping bonanza, has grown so big numerous other retailers now host concurrent sales to get in on shoppers’ eagerness to spend. That means there are plenty of discounts to be found across the internet, though some categories see steeper price drops than others.
Toys, electronics, computers, and televisions were those that saw the biggest discounts across US e-commerce during Prime Day in 2020, according to the digital research arm of software company Adobe, which tracks more than 100 million unique products and more than a trillion visits to US retail sites to create its Digital Economy Index. Toys were discounted 7.8%, leading all categories, with electronics following closely behind at 7.1%.
Adobe expects sales to follow similar patterns this year, said Vivek Pandya, a senior manager in Adobe’s digital insights division.
Prime Day sales are like a holiday in the summer
Prime Day is “serving as a true counterpoint in the summer to the online holiday season sales that we generally see during Thanksgiving and up toward Christmas,” Pandya said. Adobe estimates online spending in the US during the two days of Prime Day last year, which occurred in October due to the Covid-19 pandemic, reached $10.4 billion—just shy of Cyber Monday’s total of $10.9 billion, and more than Black Friday’s $9 billion.
That doesn’t mean the deals are equivalent though. “During the holiday season, we tend to see discounting in the range of 10% to 25%,” Pandya said. “But discounting for Prime Day is a bit more subdued.”
Still, this year shoppers will likely welcome any promotions they can get. Amazon and e-commerce more broadly have been among the forces that have held down inflation in the US in the past. But the whiplash of the pandemic has caused a rise in consumer prices as demand comes roaring back faster than companies’ ability to supply it all. The price breaks around Prime Day will give shoppers some relief, and retailers beyond Amazon will likely get to enjoy a sales bump midway through the year, rather than having to wait for the holidays.