The overwhelming majority of shoppers in Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days shied away from deals on big-ticket items, the initial data suggest.
Prime Big Deal Days took place online on Tuesday and Wednesday and were billed as a follow-up event to Amazon’s main Prime Day, which was already held in July. The event was meant to draw in shoppers keen for more deals, especially as the holiday shopping season starts to come into focus.
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Amazon Prime users saved more than $1 billion on millions of deals during the 48-hour event, which was the second year it has been held, according to Amazon. On the first day of the holiday kickoff, 25 million items with same-day or next-day delivery were purchased, the company said.
But while Big Deal Days drew quite a crowd, most were not looking to purchase big TVs or expensive goods, according to data tracked by Numerator.
In fact, of all the purchases on Tuesday and Wednesday, a mere 4% were for items that cost over $100. Nearly 60% of the goods purchased cost just $20 or less. The average price per item purchased during Big Deal Days was just under $28.
Many of the most popular purchases were more practical and utilitarian in nature.
The top item by the total number of units purchased was Premier protein shakes. That was followed by Amazon-branded batteries, Amazon Fire TV sticks, Liquid IV hydration packs, and Energizer batteries, according to the Numerator data.
The second-annual Prime Big Deal Days was branded as a success by Amazon.
“Prime Big Deal Days was a strong start to the holiday shopping season, offering Prime members an exclusive early opportunity to save and surpassing our expectations. This event outpaced last year’s holiday kick-off event, with more Prime members shopping this year,” said Doug Herrington, CEO of Worldwide Amazon Stores.
But the holiday kickoff event is part of a trend that has been growing over the last few years, according to Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst at Bankrate. Rossman said that having these discount days tied to the holiday season months before the holidays is becoming the new norm when it used to be that Black Friday was the major event for seasonal shopping.
“Black Friday sort of comes in October now,” Rossman told the Washington Examiner.
“It’s not just Black Friday or Cyber Monday anymore; Amazon and others have started their best pricing early, and I think it will continue,” Rossman said. “Deep discounts are going to be the name of the game this year.”
A recent Bankrate survey found that a third of holiday shoppers said that inflation is still changing their buying habits. Sensitivity to inflation has made shoppers more discerning, Rossman said, and may also have made them start looking for deals even earlier in the season.
Bankrate research also showed that half of holiday shoppers are projected to begin shopping before the end of October, and a quarter even started holiday shopping before the end of September, months ahead of Christmas.
While inflation is up 3.7% from the year before when that number is compounded with the previous two years, shoppers are seeing massive price increases from before the pandemic, something that is making them — and retailers — more keenly attuned to deals.
“It’s not so much the day anymore; it’s about the whole kind of season of deals,” Rossman said.
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Rossman said that further complicating holiday shopping for retailers is that people seem to value spending on experiences rather than merely goods recently, especially given that they have less money to work with because of inflation.
“When people are splurging, now a lot of it is on experiences as opposed to physical items,” he said. “I think that is a hurdle that a lot of traditional holiday retailers will be facing this year — people have cut back on what they are spending on electronics and clothes and toys. When they splurge, often it is a trip or a meal out or a concert ticket or something like that.”