KEY POINTS
- Amazon’s pandemic-delayed Prime Day appears to have been underwhelming, Citi analysts found.
- Web traffic was flat year over year and Amazon utilized muted language when explaining its Prime Day results, highlighting the boost to third-party sellers’ organizations rather than its own.
Amazon’s pandemic-delayed Prime Day appears to have been more disappointing than previous years, according to a note from Citi experts released on Friday.
Citi took a look at web traffic information gathered by marketing research company SimilarWeb and found that Prime Day 2020 web traffic was basically flat year over year, compared to practically 8% growth in 2019.
Amazon’s promotion around Prime Day results was likewise muted compared to its language in the past, Citi analysts stated. The business said Prime Day, which ranged from Tuesday to Wednesday, supplied a boost to third-party sellers, creating more than $3.5 billion in sales for the small and medium-sized businesses on its marketplace.
The messaging was starkly various from years past. Citi experts pointed to previous Prime Day results between 2016 to 2019, in which Amazon characterized the event as its “most significant day ever” or the “largest shopping event in Amazon history.”
“Based upon the language of Amazon’s news release and SimilarWeb data, it appears that Prime Day 2020 was not the ‘greatest day ever,'” Citi experts stated.
The experts pointed out several factors that may have caused an underwhelming Prime Day, including the postponed kickoff from July to October, modification in customer behavior due to the coronavirus pandemic, and proximity to the vacation shopping season.
Even if Prime Day showed to be frustrating, Amazon still stands to gain from the accelerated shift to online shopping spurred by the pandemic, Citi experts stated. Prime Day and the holiday shopping rush are anticipated to help fuel a record 4th quarter for Amazon.
Amazon stock was slightly up in mid-day trading on Friday.