Amazon will once again kick off the holiday shopping season early this October.
Doug Herrington, CEO of Worldwide Amazon Stores, unveiled plans for the Prime Day-like shopping event—billed last year as Prime Early Access, but now rebranded as Prime Big Deal Days—on LinkedIn Tuesday. The post offered minimal information about the event, instead simply saying it would offer “some of Amazon’s best deals of the season.”
Prime Big Deal Days will take place across 19 countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, the U.S., and the UK. Amazon will share additional details “soon as we get closer to the event,” Herrington said.
Shortly after last year’s October Prime Early Access sale, Bank of America (BoA) analyst Justin Post estimated that the two-day event raked in around $8 billion in gross merchandise value and drove more than 100 million transactions for third-party sellers. The BoA analyst estimated that sales came in about 25 percent below the company’s tentpole Prime Day event in July. Post’s research suggested the event managed to successfully jumpstart holiday sales, with 31 percent of customers buying holiday gifts during the sale and 14 percent saying they finished all or most of their gift buying.
Amazon chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky briefly referenced last year’s Prime Early Access sale during the company’s fourth quarter earnings call in February, telling investors that it and the traditional Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday weekend “outperformed our expectations as customers responded to millions of deals across our growing selection.”
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Neil Saunders, managing director of the data analytics firm GlobalData, described Amazon’s decision to hold a second Prime event this year as “a recognition that consumers are interested in, and stimulated by, deals and offers.”
“Holding the event in October is savvy as it allows Amazon to steal a march on holiday spending by kicking off deals long before the start of Black Friday and the traditional discount season,” Saunders added. “Of course, other retailers will no doubt jump on the bandwagon but, nevertheless, Amazon sees [this event] as giving them a first bite of the lucrative holiday season cherry.”
Last year, Target and Walmart both offered counterprogramming to Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days. Target’s three-day Deal Days event ran from Oct.6-8 last year, while Walmart’s Rollbacks and More Savings Event went from Oct. 10-13. Amazon’s Prime Early Access sale, meanwhile, lasted two days, from Oct. 11-12.
Saunders noted that Amazon’s October event could be “disruptive” to the wider retail sector as it pulls forward the spending and upends the traditional discounting calendar. “This happened last year, with far more retailers starting discounting early which reduced the impact and power of the Black Friday and Cyber periods,” he said.
“Our wider view is that the final quarter will be reasonable for retail,” Saunders added. “However, volumes will fall and a battle for market share will mean that margins come under a significant amount of pressure.”