Growth stagnating? Amazon Prime Day falls short of expectations

According to external data, Prime Day in 2021 only grew by 5-10% compared to last October's event, mainly due to the fourth quarter event). Relevant data shows that before 2020, Prime Day grew by 50% or more each year. This year's Prime Day sales reached the level that the event should have reached in 2020.

Inventory issues have limited brands’ ability to offer discounts, as well as Amazon’s warehouse constraints, which means that while the supply side of Prime Day continues to ramp up (with millions of deals this year), many of the deals aren’t what shoppers expect.

Prime Day continues to be about the quantity of deals , but not the quality . During this period, Amazon 's electronic devices, such as Kindle and Fire TV, are discounted so deeply that these products account for the majority of sales during the event .

Yet, despite millions of transactions, Amazon has no personalization, curation, or interactive commerce , and it is just routinely running minimal site and app functionality.

Social media platforms like TikTok played a big role in facilitating deals. Videos with hashtags like “#primeday2021” were collectively viewed tens of millions of times. Additionally, external sources like news sites covering Prime Day again helped discover deals because doing so generates affiliate revenue.

Amazon hosted a live video stream (only in the U.S., not in any other Prime Day countries) that highlighted products but didn’t include entertainment like musical performances or scripted content. A handful of brands featured had a significant impact on its sales, but the 30,000-70,000 viewers the video attracted were a small fraction of the total , given how many people shopped on Amazon during Prime Day.

Moving Prime Day to different dates depending on when Amazon benefits would also weaken its standing in the eyes of shoppers, who are more likely to search for “when is Prime Day” than “when is Cyber ​​Monday,” according to search trend data.

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