Amazon’s Prime Day brought in record sales this year, as inflation eased and shoppers held off on orders in anticipation of the annual sale.
Total online spending over the course of the 48-hour sales event — July 16-17 — clocked in at $14.2 billion, up 11% from last year’s Prime Day, according to Adobe Analytics, which provides reporting and analysis on consumer spending.
Shoppers placed roughly 93,500 orders and purchased 188,000 items, based on a recap from data and tech company Numerator. More than 35,000 households shopped the sale, Numerator said.
Amazon was light on specifics but said in a news release Thursday that this year’s event was the “biggest Prime Day shopping event ever.”
That isn’t a surprise; Amazon’s Prime Day event is always getting bigger. It has continued to grow year over year for as long as Adobe Analytics has been tracking it, said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst with Adobe Digital Insights.
“Sometimes it hasn’t grown at the pace we’d like to have it grow, sometimes the growth has been more moderate, especially when we’ve been seeing an inflation crunch,” Pandya said. “Now, we’ve seen inflation ease quite a bit.”
From the start of the year to June 30, U.S. consumers spent $503 billion at online retailers, up more than 7% from the same period last year, according to Adobe Analytics.
New demand, rather than higher prices, drove the growth in online shopping. E-commerce prices are down 4% year over year and have continued to fall for most of the last two years, Adobe found.
Though inflation has cooled, consumers are still cautious with opening their wallet, said Neil Saunders, managing director and analyst with GlobalData Retail. The days of “impulse-buying” are gone, he said. Instead, shoppers plan around sales events like Prime Day and similar summer discounts that rival retailers have started to compete with Amazon.
“People are really focused on their budgets,” Saunders said. Responding to that, Amazon is “very focused on the must-haves.”
“Every retailer has to work that little bit harder to get the consumer to part with the cash,” Saunders continued. “That’s not unique to Amazon, but I feel Amazon has learned the lesson really well.”
The average order size for Prime Day has continued to tick up slightly year over year, according to Numerator, from $52 in 2022 to $54 in 2023 to $58 in 2024.
Roughly 60% of households placed more than one order during this year’s event, bringing the average household order size to $152, down from $155 in 2023. That year, 65% of households placed more than one order.
Shoppers this year and last year focused on low-price items, Numerator said. The average spend per item this year was $28, with nearly two-thirds of items selling for under $20 and just 4% going for over $100.
Last year, the average spend per item was slightly higher, at $32, with 57% of items purchased under $20 and 5% over $100.
“This year’s Prime Day focused on small indulgences and everyday items,” Amanda Schoenbauer, an analyst with Numerator, said in a prepared statement. “Shoppers purchased fewer big-ticket items than we’ve seen in past years and fewer participants placed multiple orders throughout the sale.”
That shows consumers are leaning toward “more conscious shopping and a preference for saving over splurging,” she said.
Roy Avidor, co-founder and CEO of digital growth platform Cymbio, said it’s important to consider the outcome of the 48-hour event in context of the entire year of sales. He is starting to see a pattern of consumers spending less in the days leading up to the Prime sales event, knowing that the deals are coming.
“The fact of the matter is that people are waiting for these sales,” Avidor said.
When working with independent merchants who sell on platforms like Amazon, Avidor tells them to stock up. He predicted Prime Day would result in four times more sales than an average day on the platform.
“It’s not just about selling. It’s also about fulfilling and being ready with inventory in advance,” he said. “Sellers are becoming more and more prepared.”
Independent merchants sold more than 200 million items during the 2024 Prime Day event, Amazon said Thursday. It also said a “record-breaking number” of people signed up for a Prime membership in the three weeks ahead of the sale, indicating that shoppers were waiting for the big day.
The company said shoppers saved “billions” and that “millions more” Prime members made a purchase this year, compared to last year, but declined to share any specific numbers. Amazon says it has more than 200 million paid Prime members globally.
The first 24 hours of Amazon’s 2023 Prime Day marked the single largest sales day in company history, Amazon said last year. Prime members that year purchased more than 375 million items globally over 48 hours and saved more than $2.5 billion, according to Amazon.
Just ahead of this year’s sale, Amazon launched its AI-powered chatbot, Rufus, to act as a shopping assistant, helping customers compare options or find product recommendations. Rufus helped “millions” of customers shop during this year’s event, Amazon said Thursday.
“Prime Day 2024 was a huge success,” Doug Herrington, CEO of Worldwide Amazon Stores, said in a prepared statement.
Criticism ahead of Prime Day
Amazon faced criticism for its environmental impact and its warehouse working conditions ahead of this year’s Prime Day sale.
A report released Monday from Sen. Bernie Sanders found that workers are at an increased risk of injury during Amazon’s busiest shopping periods– including Prime Day and the weeks leading up to the winter holidays.
Citing internal data that Amazon shared with the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Sen. Sanders’ report found Amazon’s injury rate during Prime Day 2019 was roughly 45 injuries per 100 workers.
Amazon disputed the report’s results and said it “misrepresents documents that are several years old.”
On Tuesday, the start of the Prime Day sale, protesters dragged road blocks into the street on Amazon’s Seattle campus, calling on the company to end its use of fossil fuels while making deliveries. The group demanded Amazon eliminate greenhouse gas emissions in the “last-mile” of deliveries, or the journey from warehouse to customer’s doorstep, by 2030.
Amazon said the protesters are “wrong” about the facts and the company’s sustainability efforts.
Amazon has pledged to be net-zero carbon across all of its operations by 2040 — but some climate groups have questioned if the company has done enough to reach that milestone. In a recent sustainability report, Amazon said its carbon emissions dropped 3% last year.
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