Everybody was watching to gauge the impact of Wednesday’s Amazon Prime Day, a promotion dreamed up by Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) to give the company an opportunity to earn even smaller margins. Amazon said that it would offer special pricing Wednesday to Amazon Prime subscribers who already pay $99 a year to receive two-day free shipping, among other membership perks.

The announcement of Amazon Prime Day also brought out the company’s competitors, especially the world’s largest retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT). According to report at Time.com, Wal-Mart’s website listed rollback (sales) pricing of between 20% and 50% off on thousands of items Wednesday. Wal-Mart also lowered the free shipping threshold from $50 to $35, the same level the Amazon uses for its non-Prime subscribers.

Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT) extended its “Black Friday in July” promotion through Friday. While not directly targeted to compete with Prime Day, Target may just have gotten lucky to have the promotion already under way. Amazon did make a big noise about Black Friday last week, saying that Prime Day would feature more deals than Black Friday.

Macy’s Inc. (NYSE: M) is holding a “Surprise Specials Day” online. The offer includes lots of discounts and free shipping on all orders with no minimum purchase requirement.

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We have often wondered how come investors keep bidding up Amazon stock in the face of its rare — and tiny — profits. Apparently the company’s story that it focuses pointedly on customers, makes fast and frequent changes and drives operational efficiency more than overcomes the tiny profits and frequent losses.

For all the hype, the consensus view appears to be that, indeed, Prime Day was a dud.

Shares of Amazon traded down about 0.8% late in Wednesday’s lunch hour, at $461.95 in a 52-week range of $284.00 to $469.60.

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