This year's Prime Day turned out to be quite the success for Amazon. The company has reported that it was the biggest shopping day in its history.
Prime Day 2017 was one of the biggest days of Amazon because it even surpassed Black Friday and Cyber Monday in terms of sales. Part of this may have had to do with the fact that Amazon extended the sale to 30 hours allowing more time for customers to shop and find deals. It's also notable that Amazon opened up Prime Day to more regions than in past years. In total, shoppers from 13 different countries took part in Prime Day.
In comparison to previous Prime Days, this year's event grew by about 50 percent with 10s of millions of customers making purchases during the 30-hour shopping period. Sales during Prime Day grew by more than 60 percent compared to last year's sale. While specific numbers weren't given, Amazon did say that sales by small businesses grew by an even larger amount this year in comparison to previous years.
Amazon Products Lead The Pack
In terms of products sold, Amazon's own line of products accounted for the most sales. Amazon's smart speaker, the Amazon Echo Dot, was the bestselling product across all brands including non-Amazon products. Other Amazon products such as the Kindle Fire, Echo, and Kindle devices also saw record sales. The success of Amazon's Fire tablets is hardly surprising considering that the budget devices are among the best-selling tablet devices on the market. In a world where most people have a fairly large smartphone, people aren't willing to drop several hundred dollars on a tablet.
Of course, Prime Day and Amazon's own products all share a goal and that is to get users into Amazon's ecosystem. That's why Amazon's Fire tablets are so affordably priced. Amazon isn't concerned with making money on the hardware so much as enticing users to shop with them. Prime Day serves a similar purpose by enticing new customers to sign up for the free trial of Amazon Prime. Once they've tried out, it's likely that many customers will choose to remain members. When discussing their plans to lower the pricing of Prime membership for those on government assistance, Amazon Prime's VP said that once people try Prime, they are likely to continue their membership.
