Amazon's Prime Day breaks single-day sales record
On an otherwise typical Tuesday in July, Amazon pulled off the biggest single day of sales in its more than 20 years of doing business, outdoing all previous Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.
The company said Wednesday that customer orders for its second annual Prime Day sales event outpaced last year's inaugural Prime Day by more than 60 percent worldwide and 50 percent in the US. It was also the biggest day ever for Amazon device sales globally.
The company's release didn't offer specific comparisons to Cyber Monday or Black Friday sales, which kick off the year-end holiday spending blitz, but a spokesperson confirmed that the latest Prime Day surpassed all prior single-day sales for Amazon. Prime Day last year outpaced Black Friday sales, but Cyber Monday historically has remained Amazon's biggest sales day of the year.
"After yesterday's results, we'll definitely be doing this again," Greg Greeley, vice president of Amazon Prime worldwide, said in a statement.
It speaks volumes about Amazon's influence and reach in the retail world that the company could get people spending on a summer day when they're not usually conditioned to look for sales. Also, Prime Day becoming the company's biggest sales day yet shows how powerful Prime membership is for the company, since the sale was only available for people who pay $99 annually for the loyalty program.
Signing up for Amazon Prime gets people more than just shopping perks and free shipping. Over time, the company has widened the scope of the program to include services like streaming video and music, upping the ante for powerhouses ranging from Apple to Netflix and Walmart. Prime has an estimated 55 million to 60 million members worldwide and grew by 51 percent last year.
Amazon, the world's largest e-commerce company by revenue, set expectations high for its second Prime Day event. It said it would have more discounts worldwide than any other prior Amazon sale yet and invited far more third-party retailers to take part in the event. Amazon representatives also said they learned from criticisms of last year's event by adding more inventory to high-demand items and making the Prime Day webpage easier to navigate.
There were still hiccups along the way, with customers complaining during the early rush to grab sales Tuesday morning that they couldn't add items to their carts to purchase. Amazon responded a few hours later with this statement: "The issue that some customers had this morning, adding certain Lightning Deals to their cart, has been resolved."
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Additionally, the hashtag #PrimeDayFail, in which customers vented about problems with the sales event, returned this year after marring the first Prime Day.
Midday Tuesday, doubts were raised about whether this year's Prime Day would be a success. ChannelAdvisor, which provides tools for third-party sellers on Amazon, said sales from its customers were flat compared with the first Prime Day.
The sales event, though, did better than expected. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said the 60 percent rise in sales easily beat his prediction of a 37 percent increase from last year, with an estimated 54.4 million total unit sales worldwide.
"Prime Day is now solidified as an annual shopping holiday," he said in a note Wednesday.
As with prior Amazon sales days, the company released a handful of big sales numbers, saying it sold more than 90,000 TVs worldwide. In the US, Amazon sold over 200,000 headphones, 23,000 Roomba vacuum cleaners and 215,000 Instant Pot 7-in-1 Multi-Functional Pressure Cookers.
A study on online consumer sentiment from Adobe Digital Insights, which tracked over 4 million social engagements, showed customers were much happier with this year's Prime Day. The analysis found that 38 percent of overall sentiment on Prime Day related to sadness, down from 50 percent last year. Folks expressed joy 31 percent of the time, up from 23 percent during the first Prime Day.
Adobe said the main contributor to sadness involved people having issues adding items to their cart and checking out, while last year people complained most about the lack of blockbuster deals.