Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) brings in a large part of its third-quarter revenue on Prime Day, when its more than 100 million Prime members get a long list of special deals. Apparently, the sales are so impressive for the world’s largest e-commerce company that this year Prime Day will be two days long.
Prime Day 2019 will stretch 48 hours over July 15 and July 16. Amazon promised a “Parade of Epic Deals.” It kicked off its announcement with a plan to sell an array of Alexa-enabled devices. Alexa is Amazon’s home consumer electrics flagship. Its complex software voice-activated services do everything from turning on lights to giving weather to answering thousands of questions its owners ask. Most of the devices powered by Alexa are Amazon’s Echo line of “smart speakers.” New versions can track exercise and play games. The Alexa products are in a battle with Google and Apple software with similar features. Prime Day is an opportunity to pick up market share from its rivals.
Prime Day also will allow members to shop “thousands of products,” the company said. It will offer real-time entertainment and products endorsed by a number of celebrities. Although most Prime Day products will not be announced until the sales are in process, the company released a small number of those that will be for sale.
Amazon says it will raise the number of products available from hundreds of thousands to over a million this year. Amazon said it would offer “jaw-dropping prices.” And it announced some products will only be available in limited quantities. Summing up its plans, Jeff Wilke of Amazon CEO Worldwide Consumer said:
Get ready, as we pull back the curtain to reveal exclusive products, special performances and two full days of phenomenal deals this Prime Day. Our vision is that Prime Day should be the absolute best time to be a member – when you can enjoy shopping, savings, entertainment and some of the best deals Prime members have ever seen.
Deals will extend to Whole Foods, the grocery store chain Amazon owns and operates.
It is hard to overstate how important Prime is to Amazon. Some industry data shows Prime members spend over twice as much a year at Amazon than non-Prime members do. Amazon charges $119 a year for the service, which also adds substantially to its coffers. Even though Amazon is in other businesses like cloud computing, e-commerce remains its largest business by far. And Prime Day is one aspect of Amazon’s marketing that makes it among the American companies with the best reputations.
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