Consumers and vendors alike should probably mark the second week of July on their 2018 calendars now.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday were the biggest shopping events of the year, but in its short three-year history many believe Amazon’s Prime Day has already taken over.
Earlier this week, Amazon hosted this year’s 30-hour event, featuring round-the-clock deals that rivaled those of the best offered during the holidays.
And because Amazon limits these offers to those with its $99-per-year Prime subscription, the site also says it added more Prime memberships in one day than ever before.
Amazon’s success on Prime Day provided even those vendors and sellers not offering Prime deals with increased sales, simply due the overwhelming amount of additional site traffic.
While Amazon hasn’t dished out specific numbers just yet, they are reporting 60 percent growth in sales over last year’s event, also surpassing its sales from Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2016.
Amazon’s monumental sales on its mid-summer holiday has become only half the story, however.
Prior to Prime Day, consumer research firm Bazaarvoice estimated 76 percent of Prime Day shoppers would visit other retailer websites before making a purchase on Amazon.
It’s clear nearly all the other big players in the retail world were paying attention.
Most recognized the new shopping holiday, some choosing to compete with similar deals, specifically promoting not requiring a membership for purchase.
On Tuesday, Best Buy’s homepage stated, “Big Deals Day: Huge savings for everyone." Meanwhile, Target, J.C. Penny, Toys R Us, Dell, Kohl’s, Newegg, Macy’s, Sears, and Kohl’s all ran competitive deals during the Prime Day timeframe.
Wal-Mart, however, did not launch any special deals for Prime Day, and simply chose to stay competitive by price matching and vowing to offer, “great deals every day.”
Similarly, eBay advertised in email campaigns and on their website, "Their Prime Deal Is Our Everyday Deal: No membership, just smiles."
Yet with so many other retailers openly hopping on the speeding bus Amazon has created, these reactions by Wal-Mart and eBay could be interpreted simply as stubbornness to acknowledge a massive day for retail simply because it was created by one of its chief competitors.
All considered, however, one thing is bleakly clear: like it or not, Amazon has succeeded in making Prime Day undeniably one of the year’s most prolific shopping days.
In fact, so much so that it can no longer be ignored by competing retailers simply out of spite.
Just as each and every retailer -- from the big box to the corner boutique -- by now understands the importance of acknowledging and participating in Black Friday, the trend is quickly replicating itself for Amazon’s new international holiday.
