Marketing

10 Early Takeaways From Prime Day 2020


After a three-month delay, Amazon’s mid-summer, turned early fall, sales bonanza is finally underway, assuming a new title as the unofficial start of the holiday season.

About 24 hours in, we’re seeing some familiar patterns as customers gravitate toward popular brands from years past. However, in other respects, consumer behavior has clearly been influenced by the pandemic as new products bubble to the surface. At the halfway point, here are the most notable trends from Prime Day 2020 so far:

Prime members were up early

According to Salesforce retail strategist Caila Schwartz, Prime Day orders began to accelerate starting at 5 a.m. EDT. In fact, between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m., order volume doubled compared to last year and it doubled again the following hour.

“This is impressive,” she tweeted with an exploding head emoji.

They’re averaging 2+ orders

EMarketer predicts U.S. consumers will spend nearly $6.2 billion over the course of the 48-hour sale. Unfortunately, the market research firm will not publish figures on actual spend until next year, so we don’t have an apples-to-apples figure on progress so far. However, as of 3 p.m. EDT, Numerator found 39% of participating households had already placed two or more orders with an average spend of $76.88.

Last year, Prime Day shoppers spent $6.9 billion worldwide, per eMarketer. With 175 million items purchased, that’s roughly an average item price of $39.43.

Amazon’s gift recommendations aren’t on sale yet

Amazon released its holiday guide on Oct. 5, offering up gift ideas in categories like small business, beauty, fashion, home, electronics and, of course, toys. But, with the exception of smart home products, most of the top gifts in the guide were not included among Prime Day promotions on Day 1, Profitero found.

Amazon is once again selling a lot of smart speakers

Electronics were an early hot category, which benefited Amazon itself as eight of the top ten products were its own devices. Profitero attributed heavy promotions to the subsequent boost in sales rank of more than 10,000% for these products. Profitero also found personal electronics like Sony’s noise-cancelling headphones were “stealing the show from traditional electronic products pushed this time of year, such as TVs.”

Prime members still love Instant Pots

So far, consumers have bought a lot of smart home devices with top products including iRobot’s Roomba and also falling into categories like home security and smart speakers, Profitero said.

Instant Pot, which was a best seller during Prime Day 2019, remains a popular product through day one, which the ecommerce platform attributed to an increase in consumers cooking at home this year. 2020 deals catapulted the appliance to the No. 2 spot in Kitchen on Oct. 13, which Profitero said was a boost in rank of 10,950%.

They bought a lot of DNA testing kits…for dogs

23andMe Health and Ancestry kits topped the list of most popular products in the U.S. for Prime Day 2019. This year, however, Prime members are buying dog DNA tests like Embark’s Breed Identification Kit, which Profitero said was the 10th ranked product in the Pet category on Oct. 13, jumping 16,760% in best seller rank compared to the week before. The ecommerce platform said this is likely because of the rise in pet adoptions during the pandemic.

What constitutes “beauty” has changed

The pandemic has heavily influenced the beauty category as top deals are for essentials like digital thermometers and disposable masks, as well as for self-care products like teeth whitening strips and hair products instead of more traditional fare like makeup.





READ SOURCE

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept our use of cookies.