Digital MarketingEcommerceAmazon Prime Day 2019: Key stats on consumer habits

Amazon Prime Day 2019: Key stats on consumer habits

More than 300 retailers joined Prime Day 2019, and stats show revenue increases both on and off Amazon. What do these insights show us on consumer behavior?

Amazon Prime Day was bigger than ever in 2019. We’re looking at the most interesting stats and how retailers and consumers made the most of them.

It was a busy start of the week for Amazon with Prime Day bringing great deals to consumers for two days. Amazon’s Prime Members were able to benefit from exclusive deals in a big online shopping event. More than 100 million products were purchased in what Amazon called ‘their biggest day in history’ up to now.

According to RetailMeNot’s estimate, more than 300 retailers joined Prime Day, while last year there were just 194 retailers. Prime Day was celebrated in two days this year as Amazon saw a big opportunity to strengthen the relationship with their Prime members through numerous deals in their shopping event.

A lift in sales for retailers

The initial numbers from the first day of Prime Day indicate a 64% increase in sales for large retailers of the annual revenue of more than $1 billion. This is an increase compared to their usual performance on Monday sales but also a 10% increase from last year’s Prime Day.

Similarly, Adobe reported that small retailers of the annual revenue of less than $5 million saw a 30% increase in their online sales during the first day of Prime Day.

What’s also interesting is that retailers outside Amazon also saw an increase in their web traffic during Prime Day 2019, which led to 66% of revenue lift.

Looking at the Prime members and their habits

There are more than 100 million Prime members in the US and there is an estimate that half of all US households will have access to a Prime membership by the end of the year.

It’s useful to understand how Prime members think in order to reach them as a brand during and after Prime day.

Tinuiti launched a report to understand Prime shoppers and here are some interesting stats:

  • 73% of Prime members are open to trying new brands
  • 70.3% of Prime members rank free shipping as the top perk
  • 61% of top-spending Prime members consult Amazon first and foremost when shopping online
  • 56.8% of Prime members use their mobile devices to make purchases on Amazon

A closer look at these stats can help retailers improve their efficiency in marketing and sales to ensure that they target Prime shoppers more effectively throughout the year.

Another interesting report from Periscope By McKinsey gives useful insights into Prime shoppers and their plans for big shopping days such as Prime Day.

These are the stats that grabbed our attention:

  • 70% of Prime shoppers were planning to join Prime Day this year
  • Consumer electronics, clothing and books/movies are the most popular categories for their shopping habits
  • 40% of shoppers take advantage of voice assistant Alexa to place their orders on Amazon
  • 75% of consumers are researching potential purchases before proceeding to them

Thus, there is a growing trend of new technologies such as voice search but it’s also important to allow consumers time to do their research before they are ready to purchase an item. This is an important step in the marketing planning that cannot be ignored anymore.

An increase in different types of searches

Amazon’s Prime Day is getting a good amount of online buzz and it’s not a surprise to see the big rise in searches around the shopping event.

However, there was also an increase in the number of people who wanted to cancel their Amazon Prime subscription.  According to Captify, there were 18 times more searches for ‘cancelling Amazon Prime” than usual from consumers who wanted to end their subscription after benefiting from the sales.

Some consumers also found technical glitches when trying to load their Amazon carts, which led to frustration. Other competitors decided to use this opportunity to promote their own deals. eBay, for example, promoted their own ‘crash day’ sale and they also saw an increase in searches of 72%

Moreover, searches for Best Buy went up 255% during Prime Day and searches for Walmart saw an increase of 130%.

Thus, consumers are eager to benefit from online deals during shopping events but they won’t necessarily search for just one site to find the best deals.

How brands can stand out – What we can learn from these trends

A closer look at these trends can help us understand consumer expectations and how they shape up during big online shopping events.

Yotpo asked 2000 consumers on what they’d like to see during Amazon Prime Day and other similar days and they focused on three main things that brands should focus on:

  • Highlight reviews – 98% of respondents see authenticated customer reviews as the most important things that influence their purchasing decisions
  • Promote perks – an additional reward or perk can make the shopping experience better. 93% of the respondents would be more likely to buy from a brand offering rewards, discounts, or other perks
  • Build a loyalty or rewards program – it’s easier to build a long-lasting relationship with a loyalty program. In fact, 90% of the respondents would join such a program if their favorite brands offered it.

In a hyper-connected world, consumers expect from brands to be omnipresent. They are becoming more demanding from them, which raises the standards and expectations. This is not necessarily bad though if your brand is able to build a marketing and sales strategy that takes into consideration the latest consumer habits.

Make sure you set up a pre-shopping event strategy across different channels (email, social, blog, etc) but also pay attention to the next steps. Think of a retention plan that would keep consumers engaged and always make sure that you keep consumers at the focus of your strategy.

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