It is that time of year again and Amazon Prime Day is here! Each year we seem to hear more and more about it even though it started way back in 2013. It's also not actually just a single day, the event (and the deals) last for 36 hours this year. It has become a day of eye watering numbers even for a retailer the size of Amazon. Here are some statistics that show just how huge Amazon Prime Day really is.

Over 100 million people are now Prime Members in the US alone.

To try and convey the scale of Amazon Prime Day you first have to understand just how many people are eligible. Prime was launched on 2nd February 2005 (over 13 years ago!) and took its inspiration from the famous Walmart owned Sam's Club which is named after Sam Walton. It was even almost going to be called Jeff's Club (after Amazon founder, CEO and World's wealthiest man Jeff Bezos). According to a letter sent to shareholders this year a whopping 100 million people are Prime Member in the US. That works out as pretty much 1 in 3. Some studies have claimed membership has even reached 70% of U.S. households.

Prime Day causes spikes in Prime Membership numbers

Amazon are a little cagey with the exact figures but it's fair to assume that the lure of some bargains on Prime Day drives signups for Amazon Prime accounts. This would be perfectly in keeping with the way Amazon has historically, illustrated by the famous Amazon Flywheel. Originally known as The Virtuous Cycle, the flywheel is made up of a few key initiatives (customer experience and choice being the most obvious) and when effort is applied to either of these initiatives it increases the speed of the wheel and forces growth in all areas.

The Amazon flywheel - Prime Day contributes to it

When applied to Prime Day is very clear that Amazon would directly employ this tactic again to drive Prime Signups.

Prime Day sales still growing year on year

This is staggering statistic. Since its launch in 2013 sales on Prime Day has grown by 60% every year. When you consider that Prime Day 2016 was estimated to have earned as much as $600m in revenue that would put the 2018 event at almost 1 billion dollars or almost 28 million each hour!

Best selling product

Remember the flywheel from earlier? If so it should be no surprise that the bestselling Amazon Prime Day product in 2017 was Amazon's very own Echo Dot Voice Assistant. This was helped by a large discount down to £34.99 from the usual £50.

Other retailers are reacting

It's not just Amazon that is having sales today. To cash in on the media stories about Prime Day many other large retailers are having big sales in July. Worryingly for Amazon quite a few stories are emerging criticising the quality and exclusivity of the deals for Prime Day 2018. These stories in turn could cause shoppers to check other sites for better deals on the items thus feeding a competitor’s flywheel instead of their own.

According to the shopping comparison service Priceblink only 40% of Prime Day deals are exclusive to Amazon. However, another 40% of deals that were not exclusive still had Amazon offering the lowest price by an average of 18%.

In conclusion Amazon Prime Day 2018 is looking at being a record breaker and sales could top 1 billion USD. It's clear however that other retailers are piggybacking and driving their own sales with the publicity created by Amazon.

About the Author

Mike Mingard

Designer

Mike is a designer at Optima Systems. He grew up in West London and now lives by the sea. His first love was music which led to jobs in recording engineering and a number of years as a front of house sound engineer and theatre stage manager. Having been taught the basics of HTML while at university he continued to develop websites as a hobby. It wasn't long before he realised the hobby was the more rewarding pursuit. More about Mike.

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