Topline
A report from a major sales manager found “doorbusting” Amazon Prime Day sales were down 41% on the sale’s first day—but this might just mean customers are spending less in the early hours after Amazon doubled the length of its landmark sales event to four days this year, according to experts.
A Momentum Commerce researcher said the slow start could indicate “evolving consumer behavior” after ... More
Momentum Commerce, which manages Amazon sales for popular retailers accounting for $7 billion in spending on the online platform, said sales on the first day of Prime Day were down 41% compared to last year—but the company is still projecting growth from sales as Prime Day moves from a two-day event to four full days of deals.
Momentum is predicting growth of 9.1% from last year—down from the 14% growth projection in its own preview published in June.
Sales for Momentum’s 30 million products on Amazon were still up 477% compared to an average day of sales over the last month, the company said, meaning if those numbers held for the next three days it would still mean this year’s Prime Day sales would top 2024’s.
Momentum also said it saw “record high” engagement on Amazon, which was “most likely explained by consumers adopting more of a ‘wait and see’ mentality.”
Amazon said it did not have a comment on the record at this time.
Momentum said “tariff impact” likely played a role in sales, noting that the average discount on their products on Day 1 was 21%—down from 24% last year.“Trade policy uncertainty has driven widespread conservatism in supply chain, pricing, and advertising decisions,” Momentum wrote in an analysis sent to Forbes on Wednesday.
Customers might be taking advantage of this extended time frame of this year’s Prime Day as “shoppers strategically time their purchases across the extended event window to capitalize on new deals being released each day,” Andrew Waber, the director of market research at Momentum, told Forbes on Tuesday. Earlier on Tuesday, Momentum said early spending was down nearly 14%, Bloomberg first reported—a major shift from past years, when customers spent considerably more on the sale’s first day.
Amazon’s stock price is down since its $242.52 peak in February, missing out on recent all-time highs for many stocks, and it was heavily impacted by the slump following President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcements. Amazon announced earlier this year it would extend Prime Day into a four-day sales event, up from two days of rapid deals. Amazon is also facing steeper competition this year from competing events on the same days from other retailers, including Walmart, Wayfair’s “Four Days of Sales” and Target’s “Circle Week.”
$23.8 billion. That’s how much Adobe Analytics predicted Amazon customers would spend during the four day event—about $9.6 billion more than they spent during the event last year. The largest spending increases would come from customers shopping for school supplies—backpacks and lunchboxes, children’s apparel and office supplies—Adobe predicted.